‘Totally Killer’ Review: Kiernan Shipka Is a Gen-Z Scream Queen in Time-Traveling Slasher
Time is the slasher genre’s ultimate villain. As final girls like Laurie Strode and Sidney Prescott slow down with age, the masked killers who relentlessly pursue them never lose a step. Rather than heal all wounds, time’s inexorable passage wears down the surviving heroes of “Halloween,” “Scream” and other enduring franchises while their injuries (not all of them visible) continue to fester. It was probably inevitable, then, that the genre itself would eventually become as nostalgic as it is — especially as regards the 1980s. “Totally Killer” is hardly the first slasher to fondly recall that decadent decade, but “Always Be My Maybe” director Nahnatchka Khan’s time-traveling crossover takes a more nuanced view of it than most.
Its lore concerns the Sweet Sixteen Killer, who stabbed three 16-year-old girls to death in 1987 before vanishing without being caught. He wore a distinctive mask while knifing the girls 16 times each, his assumed visage reminiscent of Max Headroom: slicked-back blond hair, creepy smile, vacant gaze. Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) is tired of hearing about the long-gone slasher from her overprotective mother (Julie Bowen), who lived through the ordeal and would prefer that her daughter not have to face anything like it. “I’m just saying,” an exasperated Jamie tells her during an especially heated argument, “it’s not 1987 anymore.”
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Well, about that.
While eluding the Sweet Sixteen Killer after he unexpectedly comes out of retirement, Jamie finds herself transported back to that very year after inadvertently activating a time machine her best friend developed for the science fair. This particular fish-out-of-water scenario, in which a zoomer finds herself in the late ’80s, leads to expected places, some of which are fruitful and some of which are just low-hanging fruit. The comedy half of this horror-comedy comes almost entirely from Jamie commenting on her new surroundings from a Gen Z perspective: telling a man his Federal Body Inspector t-shirt is problematic, cringing at her new high school’s racist mascot. Shipka’s eye rolls are on point throughout.
In trying to break the tension with humor, too many horror movies undercut their emotional stakes by instead being glib, a pitfall “Totally Killer” mostly manages to avoid. More horrifying than any cultural insensitivities, however, is the realization that her mother was a mean girl in high school — and at risk of becoming the fourth victim.
Meanwhile, back in the present, we see the micro-effects of Jamie’s actions in real time — a clever update to the time-paradox trope. If you’re wondering what any of this has to do with a masked psychopath offing teenagers, know that the slasher half of this genre hybrid occasionally recedes into the background as its heroine endeavors to return to the present without altering the timeline for the worse. “Totally Killer” ultimately has more in common with “Back to the Future” than it does with “A Nightmare on Elm Street” or “Friday the 13th,” a connection made explicit by several references to Marty McFly’s time-traveling escapades. Every meta slasher — which is to say, nearly every slasher made since “Scream” — has to balance paying tribute to its forebears with meaningfully distinguishing itself from them. “Totally Killer” might not be an exemplar of the genre, but it is a worthy entry.
To the extent that the film does carve a space for itself, it’s largely on the strength of its lead performance. Shipka, whose Sally Draper was secretly the best character on “Mad Men,” doesn’t get any lines as devastating as “my father has never given me anything” here. But she does prove a capable scream queen, one treated with more respect by the filmmakers than so many of her predecessors. There are certainly worse narrative functions for time travel than acting as both a lighthearted sendup and corrective of a genre that is as enduring as it is, well, problematic. Hindsight is 20/20, and “Totally Killer” benefits from its clear-eyed view.
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