“Totally Killer” is the latest meta-slasher from the good folks at Blumhouse, who are also responsible for “Happy Death Day” and “Freaky” (among many, many others). And the trailer (which you can watch above) promises another knowing, blood-soaked romp, with a teenager (Kiernan Shipka) traveling back to 1987 to stop a sadistic killer from eventually murdering her mom. How’s that for a log line?
The trailer shows our young heroine (Shipka) traveling back in time via a magical photo booth (?) and then having to deal with not only the death of her mother’s young friends but also the knowledge that the killer survives and murders her mother in the present. Of course there are a bunch of jokes about what the future is like and how tubular the 1980s were, with a supporting cast that includes Julie Bowen, Olivia Holt (who faced a similar mystery in Freeform’s “Cruel Summer”), Lochlyn Munro and Randall Park.
“Totally Killer” was directed and co-produced by Nahnatchka Khan, creator of “Fresh Off the Boat” and co-creator of “Young Rock,” who previously directed the breakout Netflix romantic comedy “Always Be My Maybe,” and was co-written by Jen D’Angelo, who wrote the similarly spooky “Hocus Pocus 2” (and was at work on the third “Hocus Pocus” when the strikes happened). Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath produced “Totally Killer” alongside Blum and Khan.
If the plot of “Totally Killer” seems somewhat familiar, many have pointed out the similarities between the movie and “The Final Girls,” a 2015 sleeper that saw Taissa Farmiga reconnect with her dead mother (Malin Åkerman) by getting sucked into the 1980’s slasher movie that her mom starred in. But that movie had more of a “Last Action Hero” feeling and was, crucially, only rated PG-13. As the trailer for “Totally Killer” makes very clear, it is very R-rated. And really can’t we have room in our hearts for two metatextual slasher throwbacks?
“Totally Killer” will premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas,later this month before hitting Prime Video on October 6. Just in time for Halloween.
