A party girl discovers alcohol can help her solve the mystery of the killer targeting her sorority sisters.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jem Garrard
Starring: Siena Agudong, Brec Bassinger, Aliyah's Interlude, Jacques Adriaanse, Jessie Diepeveen
With 2017's Happy Death Day, Christopher Landon kicked off a wave of movies that combine the slasher sub-genre with the teen comedy. Just as Landon's film borrowed the setup of Groundhog Day, its imitators have similarly appropriated the plots of classic movies like Back to the Future (Totally Killer, Time Cut) and It's a Wonderful Life (It's a Wonderful Knife), with Landon himself reworking Freaky Friday as Freaky.
Director Jem Garrard's Buzzkill doesn't carry on this trope of reconstituting old plots but it does appear heavily influenced by Happy Death Day's other key feature - that of taking the character most likely to die in a slasher movie and making them the "Final Girl." Garrard's movie even nods to this influence with a dialogue exchange between two characters about a "slasher movie where the Final Girl keeps getting murdered."
In Happy Death Day Jessica Rothe played a hard-partying, sexually active college student, a far cry from the mousy, virginal types who usually occupy the role of the Final Girl. In Buzzkill we get a similarly unconventional slasher heroine. Nora (Siena Agudong) is another party girl, one who likes nothing more than getting blind drunk, much to the disapproval of her snooty sorority sisters. One night, while heavily inebriated, Nora witnesses the murder of the head of her sorority, but she loses her memories when she sobers up.
Several weeks later Nora's sorority is throwing a party, and Nora has been warned not to ruin it by getting blitzed. But Nora is determined to recall the identity of the murderer, and she is convinced that the only way she can do so is to get absolutely rat-arsed. It just so happens that the killer has returned and starts bumping off the sorority members during the party. Can Nora get wasted enough to figure out their identity before the killer gets to her?
It's a novel premise, one filled with much potential. But Buzzkill never quite figures out how to successfully realise its elevator pitch as a compelling feature length narrative. Too often the movie feels loose and rambling, often losing sight of its central idea to riff on broader slasher and teen comedy tropes. As a horror movie it has plenty of kills, but none of them are particularly inventive, and the stalk and slash sequences are executed without much building of tension or suspense.
Buzzkill's greatest strength is a knockout central turn by Agudong. It's always fun watching some good drunk acting, and Agudong gives a sozzled performance for the ages. She wisely doesn't try to convince us that she's actually drunk, rather she channels the sort of drunk acting you might find in a 1930s screwball comedy, her Nora coming off as some twisted combination of Zendaya and WC Fields.
But Buzzkill can only get so far on Agudong's strengths, and by the final act (at which point you'll have already figured out the identity of the killer) the movie's repeated one-note begins to grate. With a bit more thought given to the plot and some wittier dialogue, Buzzkill could have been a modern sleepover staple. Instead it leaves us thirsty for a better melding of horror and comedy.
Buzzkill is on Tubi from September 25th.
