Bodies Bodies Bodies director Halina Reijn talks tits and that NYT scandal

A taut, tense, Tarantino-ish slasher slash comedy and a deep insight into the pros and cons of dating Pete Davidson, Bodies Bodies Bodies is a total scream – it’s far superior to the recent Scream, too. With a kiss count competing with its kill count, the Halina Reijn-directed murder mystery shines a light (sometimes literally via mobile phone screens) on how rapidly backstabbing descends upon a friendship group at a secluded house when the electricity and internet cut out. Set over one night – and grimly relatable to anyone who can’t function without Wi-Fi – the movie doubles as a 95-minute advertisement for carnage.

“It’s an Agatha Christie kind of puzzle,” Reijn excitedly tells me in the Soho Hotel in early September. “There’s a tension between everything having to make sense, and my ambition for it to be so animalistic, sensuous, sexual, wild and untamed. It’s a hard combination!” Reijn, 46, is a Dutch filmmaker who also helmed the 2019 erotic drama Instinct. Before then, she was an actor, often on stage (hence the film’s constant Hedda Gabler references) but also in Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book. “Paul’s a huge idol to me. He’s quite old right now, but his films are so energetic. His characters are like my characters in Bodies Bodies Bodies – they don’t stop to reflect.”

At a mansion with dangerously steep staircases, a gang of posh twentysomethings and their plus-ones throw a hurricane party. There’s sober Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and her working-class girlfriend Bee (Maria Bakalova); podcaster Alice (Rachel Sennott) and her much-older Tinder hook-up Greg (Lee Pace); Hedda Gabler-starring Emma (Chase Sui Wonders) and her part-sadboi, part-fuckboi partner David (Pete Davidson); and Jordan (Myha’la Herrold), a tough-talker who hides her emotions. “Jordan has a hard exterior but she’s desperate for love and approval,” Herrold remarks in a separate conversation. “A lot of people are like that.”

Herrold, 26, is known for playing Harper in Industry, a show in which drug-taking, privileged bankers betray and sleep with each other. Likewise, Bodies Bodies Bodies taps into the animalistic urges of its young characters. When one of the group is found dead, the other partygoers immediately point fingers – and sharp objects. At the same time, the violence extends from miscommunication over WhatsApp, over-communication through private messages, and the unfortunate revelation that Jordan hate-listens to Alice’s podcast.

“The film poses the question: what is the real killer?” says Herrold. “I would argue it’s ego, pride, ignorance, and naivety. There are threats that aren’t physical weapons.” Bodies Bodies Bodies also satirises the etymology of the Extremely Online: the characters spout Twitter phrases (“you’re silencing me”) out loud. “I’ve been around people who really do talk like that,” says Herrold. “Sometimes I genuinely can’t keep up. I’m like: you’re saying a bunch of words but not saying anything at all.”

Bodies Bodies Bodies was announced in 2018 when A24 purchased a script by Cat Person author Kristen Roupenian. The draft that quickly leaked online (at least, the one I read) differs vastly from the final screenplay, which is credited solely to Sarah DeLappe. “There were great things in (Roupenian’s) script,” says Reijn. “But for me, it should be about human behaviour. So we changed the ending.”

Whereas the 2022 Scream was shot with multiple finales and felt like the killer was picked out of a hat, the reworked Bodies Bodies Bodies ensures that there’s logic behind every character’s motivation. “When the Wi-Fi is cut, the monsters come out, and we’re capable of killing,” the director says.

Reijn’s dramatic background means that Bodies Bodies Bodies remains grounded, even if some cast members are internationally famous for Borat 2 and feuds with Kanye West. Reijn compares her approach to Marina Abramović: she’s exploring where real life and acting collide. “In films, (Davidson) is shown as a goofy stoner. I thought: no, he has a dark side. Luckily, he’s not (his character) David, but he has a toxic, attractive, dangerous energy. A lot of male actors are afraid to go there, because they want to be likeable. But I knew he wouldn’t care. When he says, ‘I look like I fuck’ – that wasn’t in the script.”

In my favourite scene, the characters take turns to slap each other. When gently tapped on the face by Bee, David (or Davidson breaking character) demands to be smacked harder. “We do that a lot before we go onstage,” Reijn explains. “It’s a way to get your adrenaline pumping. It makes you look beautiful because you have red cheeks. It’s a little sexy. When we wrote it in the script, people were like, ‘What?’ I was like, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”

“[Pete Davidson] has a toxic, attractive, dangerous energy. A lot of male actors are afraid to go there, because they want to be likeable. But I knew he wouldn’t care” – Halina Reijn

While some multicultural films pretend race doesn’t exist or have one-dimensional characters defined solely by their skin colour, Bodies Bodies Bodies finds a satisfying, nuanced middle ground: this isn’t a film about race, but differences are acknowledged. “Absolutely,” says Herrold. “You put a diverse group of people in a room together, and just let them behave. All those things – race, class, whatever – just exist, and there can be a commentary made about it.”

However, in a fierce argument, Sophie bemoans that her friends shamed her for being a Black woman with a drug problem, whereas they shrug when David, a white guy, snorts coke. “We don’t bang those things over your head,” Herrold continues. “They exist without us saying them – until you weaponise it. Which is what Amandla’s character does.”

In the US, Bodies Bodies Bodies has 2022’s second-highest per-theatre average. However, the New York Times quipped that the film was a “95-minute advertisement for cleavage”. In response, Stenberg privately messaged the critic, Lena Wilson, “Your review was great. Maybe if you had gotten ur eyes off my tits you could’ve watched the movie!” This is public information because Wilson shared the Instagram DM in a TikTok.

Herrold, who laughs when I quote the review, says, “When I read that, I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re watching, because I don’t even have any cleavage.’ If somebody thinks the film is an advertisement for the human body, I would argue they weren’t watching the movie. They were just looking at the bodies.”

I tell Reijn that Dazed published an opinion piece in support of Stenberg. “I’m the least likely to ever think, ‘OK, let’s look at those breasts,’” says Reijn, comically rubbing her hands. “I’m also straight. We had a wonderful costume designer, and the actors had a huge say in what they wore. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But I was in Amsterdam last week for my premiere. It was a big thing, because I’m very famous in my country, and I wanted to make my country proud.

“Someone introduced me to the audience. It was a full house with thousands of people. And they said, ‘Here’s the actress that has always been nude on stage. So nude that I would sit in the front row, and feel like I could disappear inside her.’ We’re talking about my whole stage career, and that’s my intro?” Wait, that was last week? “Last week! So being objectified and sexualised is something I’ve known my whole career. When Amandla said, ‘Why have we been talking about my chest since I was 15?’ – I could relate to it. I was like: why are we talking about breasts all the time?”

Reijn adds, “Hopefully things are changing. But in the end, the whole New York Times scandal was great – because more tickets were sold.”

Bodies Bodies Bodies is exclusively in UK cinemas on September 9