‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Director Halina Reijn Reveals Her Favorite Scene From the Film
Lex Briscuso
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All the secrets you keep from your friends about your friends? They can be deadly, as shown in the new A24 horror comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies. The film, which releases on August 5, explores the insidiousness of friendships, the beast that is group dynamics, and the monstrous presence of the Gen Z psyche. Everyone in this movie is taking accountability, checking their privilege, and listing their triggers, mostly with lethal results.
Bodies Bodies Bodies follows a group of rich Gen Zers who reunite at one of their lavish mansions for the hurricane party of the century just before a massive storm hits. Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and her girlfriend, Bee (Maria Bakalova), take friends Alice (Rachel Sennott), Jordan (Myha’la Herrold), Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), and Emma’s boyfriend, David (Pete Davidson), by surprise when they show up for the shindig. But the group decides to take advantage of a power outage anyway and play a Mafia-style game that will fracture their friendships further than ever, as well as put every person at the party in play as the game transfers over into real life in a dark and deadly way.
We caught up with director Halina Reijn about the film’s core story, her directing style, the root of the movie’s horror, and more. It should come as no surprise that the filmmaker’s favorite scene of the feature is probably one of its best.
Dread Central: What about Kristen [Roupenian]’s story made you want to work on this film? The story itself is just so unique and interesting, and we see a lot of tropes that we’ve seen in horror before. But it’s very much its own thing.
Halina Reijn: When I read the initial version, it was the idea of the game Bodies Bodies Bodies, because I have a very tight friend group and we always used to play it. We call it Werewolf or Mafia. And it would always go wrong and it would always be a disaster. I would always feel that I didn’t really do it in the right way and that I didn’t really belong. All of these feelings. I thought it would be an excellent vehicle to talk about group behavior and study human nature without being pretentious or too heavy.
That theme of wanting to belong to a group and how seductive that is, but also, are we civilized or are we beasts? What does it take for the beast to come out? I felt that with the idea that she had on the page, I could recreate that with Sarah DeLappe.
I come from the theater. I’m a stage actress. I retired. But I spent all my life in the same theater group. So I thought this film, we need to operate in the same way. We need to create a mini theater ensemble even if we don’t have a lot of rehearsal time, but that’s what I wanted to do. The main thing that I learned from my director, Ivo van Hove, is no ego. We’re all carrying this together. And that’s what I felt I wanted to do with these actors. And also, for them to collaborate with me instead of them thinking that I’m the boss and I’m going to tell them what to do. They all were very up to that.
Especially me being 46 and pretending that I can make a film about Gen Z, I had to be very open to them and they are all just geniuses. If you make them feel responsible and take them seriously and make them feel safe, they start to blossom and give you ideas that you can never ever think of yourself. And Sarah DeLappe being a very young writer, all of that together created what it was.
My method is to do really long takes so they have to learn all their lines. It’s really as if we’re going to do a live show. This is how I breathe, this is how I think. And for them, it’s exciting because a lot of them grew up on movie sets. They only know the very technical, and we are not like that… They have to be alert at all times. Then it becomes very real to them and then you get that interesting tone. They were super up for the preparation and rehearsing their lines constantly together. We were all in a bubble. We were in a motel close to the set, everything was in one house. So we really became that group.
DC: What would you say is a piece of advice, maybe, or even something that you learned from Hove that you brought to this? He’s one of my favorite directors on stage.
HR: Oh my god, I love him. I think everything I basically do is still a tribute to him. I’m still completely obsessed with the man and talk to him a lot. And I feel, even though this isn’t a commercial film and it’s super entertaining, I think it has a very dark undercurrent and everything we talked about, the toxicity of it all, the narcissism of it all, and how we’re all glued to our screens instead of to each other. When we lose wifi, they’re not in the moment. They’re not really able to deal with a crisis because they’re living in this sort of second reality of their phones.
I’m not pointing at that generation at all. We are all everything. I have an innocent little girl in me, but I also have this super fearful mouse in me. Then I have this really old elephant in me, and then I have this bitch in me. We’re all layered and that is what I learned from him. It’s not so much about character and backstory. It’s way more about the story that you want to tell and the group as a character.
DC: What was the most challenging thing for you in creating Bodies Bodies Bodies? Because there are just so many moving parts. It’s so fast. What did you find when you were actually in the thick of it was the most challenging aspect for you?
HR: I think it’s, language-wise, extremely heavy, which is, of course, very odd for a film like this in this genre. So it’s almost a theater play. At the same time, I wanted to make a very primal, sexy, crazy, violent film and very energetic, and very cinematic. So that was a huge challenge. And to even find the tone, because the tone, it is funny, but it should also be a little scary. Then there’s the whole murder mystery of it all and the puzzle, so all of those elements were a lot to bring together. During the whole process, it was not only my DP and the actresses, but also the editors later who had to really get into that. It was a long puzzle.
The music, the score, everything adds to that. It’s very delicate because the moment you make the music too heavy, for instance, the film doesn’t work anymore because then you’re coloring in. You cannot judge what’s going on. You can only witness it because it’s such a delicate, fragile tone. And every time you make a joke, the tension goes away so you have to build up the tension again. It was a lot, but I so enjoyed it. To make it feel very visual, even though we have so much language, I think Jasper, my DP, did an excellent job and we used the darkness as our style, make it our advantage, even though on the page we were like, “Ahhh!”
Also from Ivo is to prepare intensely. Prepare like you are a sergeant going on a mission so that you can be open to the actors at the moment and you can be open to any crew member and their ideas because you prepare so well. That is something I will never, ever forget and do with whatever I’m going to do.
DC: It definitely, I’m sure, was very interesting for you to tackle that in a different way than you’re used to tackling it. Do you have a favorite scene?
HR: I do find the scene, it is scene 83 — I always say 83. Nobody knows anymore what that means, of course. But that is the big scene with the girls at the very end. Did you shoot me? Did you just shoot me? It’s the final shootout between the girls and we almost approach it very close to a Western, like they’re cowboys. They all get their moment and they can show all their acting skills and everything that we build up to until then. We really take all the fruits from what we saw in the beginning. So I’m super proud of them in that scene, to be honest with you.
DC: It’s a good scene. It’s certainly what you’ve been waiting for the whole movie. My last question to you is what scares you most about the idea of being involved in a situation like in Bodies Bodies Bodies? If you were to put yourself sort of in a friend group like this, with similar baggage and similar issues and similar weapons, what scares you most about it? Because to me, in the film, the murder is not the scary part.
HR: No. It’s really what we are capable of, humans, just group behavior. Who are we under pressure, who do we become, and what does it take for us to become violent? Of course, this is a very small example and a small story in the house. But worldwide, there are all these horrible and scary examples of what groups can do and cults and religious movements and politically colored movements and beautiful movements as well. Groups can also do beautiful things. But there, in all of us, there is a very scary beast and the question is, what does it take for that animal to come out?
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