Funny, Predictable Slasher Totally Killer Bridges Horror Across Generations

Thirty-eight years after Marty McFly traveled into the past (only to accidentally seduce his teenage mom), Totally Killer’s Jamie Hughes (Kiernan Shipka) finds herself in a similar predicament. Taking place during the slasher film’s heyday, director Nahnatchka Khan’s horror-comedy tells the story of a present-day teenager who travels back to 1987 to help her mother defeat a masked murderer who has it out for her and her friends. As lame as she finds her dorky dad Blake (Lochlyn Munro) and overprotective mom Pam (Julie Bowen), the trip back in time has her shocked to find them recklessly horny and at the top of their high school’s social hierarchy.

Riffing on classic genre films like Halloween, Heathers and Back to the Future, Totally Killer continues the recurring trend of horror films and television shows situating themselves in this bygone era, proudly wearing its inspirations on its sleeve. More than targeting people who grew up during the ‘80s however, Khan’s film gears itself to younger audiences who have come to expect a certain degree of self-referentiality and Easter egg hunting from media set during that decade. Its glossy streaming aesthetic (it went straight to Amazon Prime), composed of flat lighting and visible costuming, is a major detraction, failing to capture the tense and elegant ambience that distinguishes the films Totally Killer clearly alludes to. Fortunately, the movie’s refusal to take itself seriously helps suspend some of the disbelief that comes from this lack of atmosphere, falling in line with the subgenre’s silly, self-referential trappings.

Therefore, Totally Killer is at its strongest when it focuses on the bonds between its leads. Pam Hughes is easily the film’s most compelling character, played to heartwarming effect by Bowen and to bitchy teen perfection by a hilarious Olivia Holt. Adult Pam is a caring mother, doing her best to raise her daughter while remorseful about the fractures in their relationship. There’s a certain poignancy when she dresses up as Claire from The Breakfast Club for Halloween early in the film, only to earn an eye roll from Jamie. Pam holds on to what was hip in her youth, but that was so long ago. Things have changed. This dissonance between what was “cool” then and what’s “cool” now informs how the central women perceive the world and each other. It’s also what makes the turning of tables—after Jamie travels to the past where she’s no longer in vogue—so clever.

To that end, Jamie isn’t the most considerate daughter, even if it is established that she does care for her mother in the film’s first act, which sees adult Pam targeted by the killer who tormented her and her friends in their youth. This isn’t an inconsistency, but rather a duality anyone who has ever been a teenage girl with a mom will recognize. Their bond, and its reflection of the love that remains between mothers and daughters—even when they grow apart and take one another for granted— is the beating heart of Totally Killer.

The premise of a time-traveling murderer who sends the protagonist on a quest to course-correct history and save her family from evil, is rife with potential for new and creative twists on common horror, comedy and sci-fi tropes. Unfortunately, the predictable twists of David M. Matalon, Jen D’Angelo and Sasha Perl-Raver’s screenplay result in very little suspense, and the inconsistent butterfly effect logic makes the sci-fi aspect lackluster.

As such, humor ends up being Totally Killer’s strongest asset, with many of its best moments tactfully drawing upon the raunchiness of older films and on the political incorrectness of the decade. (“You wanna have sex in the hot tub?” a character asks. “Hell yeah! But I suck at foreplay so you have to use the jets for that,” another answers.) The screenwriters’ knack for portraying the generational differences between parents and their offspring comes as a breath of fresh air at a time when other films and shows have tried and failed to do the same, due to their weak grasp of slang and social justice terminology.

As a slasher, though, Totally Killer excels most in its portrayal of the horrors of suburbia—a setting which creates an illusion of prosperity while distancing people, separating them into private spheres that create distrust for your neighbor. From Halloween to Nightmare on Elm Street, slashers have often played into the fears of the average suburbanite through boogeymen who come to disturb the peace that these settings promise. When the “Sweet Sixteen Killer” seamlessly breaks into the Hughes household by breaking the glass window on the front door, reaching in and unlocking the house from the inside, we can’t help but ask why these easily breached structures are such staples in these types of neighborhoods. Making suspects out of all of its characters, this whodunnit also highlights the deep-rooted alliances and resentments that develop in small towns over the decades, probing the question of whether it’s ever safe to assume that nothing could ever happen to us in the safety of our own communities.

Totally Killer isn’t as great as the sum of its parts, but its playful sincerity and creative chase sequences make it an easy, enjoyable Halloween watch that couldn’t have come at a better time. Not every slasher needs to hit the highs of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and this is at least as good I Know What You Did Last Summer—which is to say it’s…serviceable. If Khan’s film ends up achieving cult status down the line, its final showdown between Jamie, Pam and the killer will be what gets referenced in future entries into the slasher canon.

Director: Nahnatchka Khan
Writer: David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver, Jen D’Angelo
Starring: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Julie Bowen
Release Date: October 6, 2023

Ursula Muñoz S. is a critic, journalist and MFA candidate at Boston University who has previously written for news and entertainment outlets in Canada and the United States. Her work has appeared at Xtra, Cineaste, Bright Wall/Dark Room and more. For further reading, feel free to follow her on Substack and X, where she muses about Taylor Swift and Pedro Almodóvar (among other things).