TRAGEDY GIRLS (2017)

Studio:       Gunpowder and Sky
Director:    Tyler MacIntyre
Writer:       Chris Lee Hill, Tyler MacIntyre
Producer:  Anthony Holt, Armen Aghaeian, Edward Mokhtarian, Cameron Van Hoy, Tara Ansley, Craig Robinson
Stars:     Brianna Hildebrand, Alexandra Shipp, Jack Quaid, Nicky Whelan, Kerry Rhodes, Timothy V. Murphy, Elise Neal, Marycarmen Lopez, Rosalind Chao, Savannah Jade, Austin Abrams, Josh Hutcherson, Kevin Durand, Craig Robinson

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two teenage best friends obsessed with true crime kidnap a murderer hoping he can teach them how to become serial killers.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Aspiring murderers and teenage best friends Sadie Cunningham and McKayla Hooper use classmate Craig Thompson as bait to lure Lowell Orson Lemon, aka ‘The Rosedale Ripper,’ to a local lover’s lane. Sadie and McKayla suffocate Craig when Lowell doesn’t fully kill him. The girls also capture Lowell and explain that they want him to train them to be serial killers. Lowell refuses, so the girls lock him away and keep him captive.

Sadie and McKayla use ‘Tragedy Girls,’ their website devoted to true crime, to promote panic about a killer in Rosedale. However, Sheriff Blane Welch assures the town that Craig was a runaway and no such serial murderer exists. The girls are further dismayed when they realize their social media popularity isn’t gaining any traction.

Sadie and McKayla decide to kill again and frame Lowell. They lay a spike strip to trap McKayla’s popular ex-boyfriend Toby Mitchell and end up stabbing Toby’s mangled body to death. Sheriff Welch and newscaster Trish Ortega report Toby’s death as an accident, confounding the girls once more.

When classmate Sylvia Stanton suggests cancelling prom because of the tragedy, Sadie and McKayla make her their next target. The duo confronts Syl in the school’s workshop and dismembers her body so that it is impossible to rule her death an accident. Janitor Mr. Gordon obliviously changes the trash without noticing the carnage while a bookish girl finds Syl’s body.

Jordan Welch, the sheriff’s son whom Sadie has a crush on, warns McKayla that his father is upset with the girls over their blog. Jordan becomes Sadie and McKayla’s alibi when they are confronted by Sheriff Welch and Principal Gerald Reid.

Fire marshal ‘Big Al’ Hill speaks at a memorial service and proclaims that he believes a serial killer is loose. The public rallies behind him. This enrages Sadie and McKayla because Big Al stole the limelight they were creating for themselves.

Still a reluctant prisoner, Lowell begins sowing seeds of distrust with McKayla that Sadie always bosses her around. Meanwhile, Sheriff Welch refuses to listen to Jordan about clues posted on the Tragedy Girls blog.

Sadie and McKayla stalk Big Al and Mrs. Kent, the teacher he is sleeping with. McKayla tries seducing Big Al at a gym during his workout, and the two girls end up physically fighting him until he is partially decapitated by a falling weight machine bar. Big Al’s trainer Drew later finds the body.

Jordan shows Sadie police files about the case. After news of Al’s death breaks, the Tragedy Girls website begins blowing up.

At an emergency town hall meeting, Jordan notices McKayla sending a gruesome death picture to the phones of everyone in attendance. The girls are successful in riling everyone up over the sheriff’s inability to solve the case and his initial dismissal about a serial killer.

While the girls march in a lethargic rally with concerned citizens, Jordan breaks into the school and researches McKayla’s psychological profile. Back at the rally, the mayor is shockingly discovered impaled on a pole in the town square. Sadie and McKayla realize that Lowell escaped.

Jordan tells the girls that he won’t edit their videos anymore. Because of her crush, Sadie initially dismisses McKayla’s insistence that they kill Jordan. But after additional pressure, Sadie volunteers to be the person who murders Jordan.

Sadie goes to Jordan’s house and prepares to stab him while McKayla listens in her car through a planted microphone. Jordan confesses to Sadie that he suspects McKayla may be in involved in his mother’s mysterious death many years earlier. With their connection deepening, Sadie and Jordan kiss.

Outside, McKayla sees Lowell entering the house. Lowell attacks Jordan. McKayla races inside to rouse Sheriff Welch while Sadie fights Lowell. The sheriff fires his gun at Lowell, but the killer escapes by diving through a window.

In the aftermath, Sadie is hailed as a local hero for protecting Jordan and saving his life. Feeling pushed aside by Sadie stealing the spotlight, McKayla angrily confronts Sadie in front of the prom committee. Their friendship dissolves.

Sadie and Jordan go to prom together and are crowned king and queen. Meanwhile, McKayla arrives with Lowell, having seemingly succumbed to his earlier suggestion that they team up. McKayla and Lowell murder Mrs. Kent and text the pictures of her corpse to Sadie as a taunt.

Sadie follows McKayla through the school. Jordan secretly trails Sadie. Sadie and McKayla confront each other. Jordan overhears when McKayla mentions how the two girls made Jordan’s mother their first murder as children. As McKayla tells Sadie she feels her friend is choosing Jordan over her, Lowell enters.

Jordan pushes a stage wall onto Lowell and tells Sadie to run. McKayla and Lowell catch up and corner Jordan and Sadie. Lowell turns on McKayla when she tells him Sadie is off limits, so she draws a gun and shoots him.

Sadie and McKayla embrace. Jordan tells McKayla that she will pay for what she did. Sadie counters that McKayla is still her best friend. Jordan tries swaying Sadie by saying she is nothing like McKayla. After kissing Jordan, Sadie tells him, “you don’t know me at all.” Jordan ends up with a noose around his neck and the girls hang him.

Donning masks and holding hands, Sadie and McKayla chain the auditorium doors and set the prom on fire. Sheriff Welch resigns after the tragedy and Lowell ends up blamed for all of the crimes. Sadie and McKayla become celebrities as their parents send them off to college together.

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Review:

Here’s a setup you’ve seen before: A boy and a girl parked alone at night along a remote lover’s lane.  A nearby noise interrupts their makeout session, prompting one tiptoeing teen to step out of the car and investigate with a lump in his throat.  Suddenly from the shadows springs a mystery maniac to thrust a blade in the boy’s belly of bursting blood.  Surely a shriek from dead Romeo’s date comes next?

Not quite, because here’s something you haven’t seen before: Right behind the murderer is girl #2, up to a dirty deed of her own.  Sadie and McKayla knew how to capture ‘The Rosedale Ripper’ all along.  They just needed a classmate with a crush to give up his life as unwitting bait.  With the killer in custody, perhaps these young ladies plan to turn him over to the police and be hailed as heroes?  Wrong again.  Sadie and McKayla aspire to become serial killers themselves, and they want The Rosedale Ripper to teach them.

“Tragedy Girls” chronicles the quest of two BFFs obsessed with true crime to achieve social media superstardom by blogging about a murder spree in their sleepy hometown.  Trouble is, with no one paying attention, and with the original killer now held as an uncooperative hostage, the girls have to pick up where The Rosedale Ripper left off by committing more murders themselves.

“Tragedy Girls” has done its homework on how to hook horror and humor into a singularly sassy, savvy, and splattery movie.  By design, it isn’t as zanily comical as something like the similarly-styled “The Final Girls,” but it taps that same vein of sharp comedic thriller satirizing slasher cinema while thumbing its nose at contemporary culture too.

If it’s true that 50% of directing is casting, a debatable bit of hyperbole if ever there was one, director Tyler MacIntyre gets full percentage points and then some from a roster whose lowest totem is as tuned up as its top.  Leading the way, Brianna Hildebrand and Alexandra Shipp chew off caricatures of typically trite teens and bite into their backstories with lip-licking, vixen-like villainy keeping Sadie and McKayla charismatically wicked without being too wild.

It’s a tough task to laugh with and like two unremorseful psychos, yet these girls come across as joyously demented with slyly sociopathic charm.  “Tragedy Girls” flexes its muscle by consciously portraying both ladies not as victims, but as twisted teens very much in control of their actions.  Trauma didn’t turn them terrible.  This is their choice for empowerment.  Stereotypes are sidestepped because Sadie and McKayla are represented as self-assured young women, even if they are operating on misguided minds.

Stars from big screens and small, specifically Josh Hutcherson and Craig Robinson, turn up essentially for cameos, though they refrain from stealing any spotlights, content to play quick bits in tune with the tone while the core duo keeps carrying the bulk.  Truthfully, any actor can be singled out for a mention, including Katie Stottlemire, whose character isn’t even given a name, but whose deadpan expressions are always on cue for a gag.

Repeating the promise shown in his previous film “Patchwork” (review here), Tyler MacIntyre again displays an intuitive knack for being funny without being cartoony.  “Tragedy Girls” knows its humor is inherent onscreen, never attempting to forcefully squeeze out a laugh through exaggeration, except when it comes time to dismember a corpse or brain a weightlifter in boldly bizarre and gory fashion.

As an example, watch the camera’s positions and note the timing of cuts when the school janitor interrupts the girls in an act of horribly bloody murder.  Comedy isn’t completely situational.  Angles and editing are always in mind to help highlight humor.

“Tragedy Girls” can be surprisingly gruesome, and its “good things come to those who kill” undertone makes the material somewhat scandalously dark.  At the same time, the script’s smartness, the cast’s enthusiasm, and confident directing make the movie devilishly fun.

Tyler MacIntyre has a unique take on how to make horror/comedy intelligent as well as entertaining.  If they aren’t already, “Tragedy Girls” cements that his is a voice genre film fans should definitely be listening to.

Review Score:  85

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