Two seasons are unique in the world of cinema – Christmas and Halloween. The reason is that if you make a movie for one of these seasons and it’s a great one, chances are that movie might join the ranks of “classics” for that season, the films people love and tend to rewatch every year during those seasons. And Totally Killer, whilst not without some flaws, I can see becoming one of those modern classics in 10/15 years’ time, where people would gather together, have a watch party and put this on.

The main reason I think that is the script mixed with the “vibe” of this movie. It knows what it is; it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. If I were to simplify it, it’s Halloween (1978) mixed with Back to the Future (1985, my review here). And this film does everything but break the fourth wall to confirm it; it’s not denying it; it wears its heart on its sleeve. Due to that earnestness, it is charming and easy to forgive/get over a few things, like the fact a teenager (based on her mum’s diary) figures out time travel. No, this movie doesn’t pretend to shake hands with reality; it spits in reality’s face to give us a comedic horror with a few time travel paradoxes mixed in for a good time.

I had a great time every time we were in the 80s because the young cast had brilliant chemistry. Everyone from Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson to Stephi Chin-Salvo were great in their roles, and what’s better, they played well with each other. This movie has many group scenes, so you rarely get time with just one or two characters (except for Kiernan), and therefore, they needed to work well with each other; they had to have that group chemistry nailed, and they did.

What I also liked and was surprised how it didn’t get old were all the “Oh yeah, it’s the 1980s.” jokes. From the casual racism to Kiernan’s character managing to enrol into high school with no papers, those jokes always worked. I think the reason they didn’t get old was they knew how to spread them around and understood that they couldn’t make the same joke ten times in a row. Totally Killer had them sprinkled throughout the film, so they can make you chuckle at least and laugh at best.

I appreciated the spin on time travel and how this movie not only tries to “re-invent” it (by telling us Back to the Future got it wrong), but it shows us what is happening in 2023, whilst Kiernan’s character is away, how her timeline doesn’t just “stop” or disappear instantly. I thought that was a good spin on the expected formula, as not many movies I can remember would do that, despite some of those scenes slowing the pace down for me. Which is weird, writing how I appreciated this twist whilst admitting I might have preferred had we stayed in the 1980s entirely. But that wasn’t my biggest issue with this movie.

My biggest issue was the last 20 minutes of this film. Respectively, two things – the CGI and the killer reveal. The reveal I won’t spend that much time on it as I don’t want to dip into spoilers, so I will just say that it was obvious. And that is as much as I will say because saying anything else might ruin some surprises for people who haven’t seen it yet. Now, the CGI… I don’t know whether production was behind schedule and ran out of money, but that was… a choice. There was a scene near the end of the movie where we saw the killer stabbing someone. And until that scene, all the other stabbing scenes looked real, but there was one where you could clearly tell the killer wasn’t stabbing anyone. What a weird shot and the decision to keep it in the film; you could have always cut to something else, but no. Another thing, there was a foreshadowing about a nail gun, and once that comes back and gets used, the final result looks… well, plasticky as fuck. The thing is, until the last 20 minutes, I didn’t think of the movie’s budget because it looked and felt perfectly fine, so those choices towards the end pulled me out of it.

But other than that, I enjoyed Totally Killer. I liked the ending, and it will be interesting to see whether this will do well enough to warrant a sequel. If you go into this movie with the mindset that you will see a comedy movie with some horror elements rather than horror with some comedic elements, I think you should have a good time. Purely on the strength of that 80s casting alone, it’s a good time. Also, who wouldn’t want Julie Bowen as their mom?

Overall, Totally Killer surprised me by how much fun I had with it. The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously and is a homage to horror and comedy movies of the past decade, bringing its own time-travelling spin on this genre as well. If it wasn’t for the questionable execution of a few scenes towards the end and that horrible CGI, my rating would have been higher. But who knows, maybe when I rewatch it during the next Halloween, I will mind it less…? It will be interesting to see where this film stands in 10/15 years’ time.

That’s all for this one! Did you see it? What did you think about it? Let me know!

Until next time,

Luke