Ok But Way Too Derivative

The Final Girls
+
Back to the Future
+
Scream
=
Nothing Original, But Entertaining

Besides being derivative of a bunch of movies and somehow never making anything its own, the movie was let down by being way too safe in another regard. Every 15 minutes there’s a “joke” from the lead character about the kind of shit a dumb millennial would bitch about today. It’s very lazy and makes the character insufferable. (Imagine walking around all day 100% certain that you’re the be all and end all about what’s morally correct. I don’t have kids but someone’s raised a generation of church lady narcs.) A much more interesting and entertaining and genuinely subversive approach would be if the character acted like Captain Picard and followed the Prime Directive. Imagine the stank face lead character in this movie running around being “insensitive” at every turn lest she disrupt the time-space continuum. Instead hero here is freaking out over calling some fat, a school having an Indian mascot, lesbian jokes, you name it.

Andy anyway it’s unnecessary because the film already does all the things modern films do to “subvert” all those big, bad cultural norms. For instance: there’s only male objectification, women are in top jobs in traditionally male-dominated fields, the characters are completely unrealistically diverse and nobody even mentions it, heck, there’s even two token Black Girl Science Genius characters.

Cut that crap out, give the movie a visual identity beyond Basic Netflix Content, give it some edge, develop the mystery better, and use something called atmosphere to make it more horror-esque, because as it is the movie looks and feels very generic, has a piss poor murder mystery element, and it’s horror in name only.

There are some fun moments, though, the young mom character is good bitch, and the soundtrack is cool. Watchable.