7/10
Great!
18 May 2024
Warning: Spoilers
I usually say things like, "This was good for a Tubi Original," but Killer Body Count is damn good for a slasher, much less one made in 2024.

Cami George (Cassiel Eatock-Winnik) gets caught making out -- beyond that, engaging in mutual masturbation, which she initiates -- with a boy in the storage room of her church. Her father blames the suicide death of her mother (Kira Wilkerson) for how she acts and Father Tim tells him that they will send her to the Beautiful Savior Treatment Center.

This place used to be a retreat for priests and a sleepaway camp where either mushrooms -- or a young priest who went insane and decided to kill young fornicators -- wiped out everyone staying there other than brother and sister Eugene (Bjorn Steinbach) and Tawny (Alex McGregor). They've started this camp to help Catholic boys and girls to grow up with less sin in their heart and that means isolating the sexes, locking them in, throwing away their phones and teaching them Jehoga, which gets rid of all that weird Eastern psychology in yoga.

Cami is now pretty much a captive, living along with Chris, Rob (Ethan Sanders), Bree, Ali (Khosi Ngema), Wyatt (Savana Tardieu), Mia (N'kone Mametja), Bree (Jessie Diepeveen), Riley (Atara Leigh) ,Dan -- who looks like Jesus if he drank kombucha -- and Kevin (Adam Lennox) as they breathe, worship and commit to protecting themselves from their sexual urges.

Except that these are teenagers and they all just want to get laid, so they just keep on doing it, even if whoever orgasms seems to get killed by a devil-masked slasher who lives in the woods. Or a ghost. Or the priest, who has remained there ever since he massacred everyone so long ago.

This is a movie filled with great dialogue, such as "I saw a guy you ****** get murdered by a guy in a devil mask. I'm far from OK." and "He was crushed to death. How is that an accident? God works in mysterious ways." It also doesn't forget that young people today are no longer constrained by heterosexual relationships and never shames them for having urges, even if that's all that Tawny seems to do, including making Cami kneel on rocks or slicing a crucifix into Wyatt's hand.

It's hard to make a slasher in the post-Scream era yet this gets so much right. The kills look incredible, the villains have a great modus operandi even if it's taken from so many giallo movies (no complaints) and the cast is uniformly attractive.

Director Danishka Esterhazy also made the remake of Slumber Party Massacre and The Banana Splits Movie. I enjoyed both of those, but I loved this. It was written by Jessica Landry, who also wrote the Tubi Original Obsessed to Death.

Slasher fans -- don't miss this one.
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