The slasher comedy Totally Killer has a high concept. In a mashup of the Scream, Halloween, and Back to the Future movies, a teenager goes back in time, to 1987, to prevent a slasher massacre and also save her mother’s life. What the Happy Death Day movies did for Groundhog Day, this does for Marty and Doc. The film was directed by Nahnatchka Khan, who created the underrated sitcom Don’t Trust the B—in Apartment 23 a decade ago, and later helmed the 2019 Netflix romcom Always Be My Maybe.
Totally Killer, which debuted this week on Prime Video, is in tune with the tropes of the slasher genre, as well as those of 1980s movies. Scripted by David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver, and Jen D’Angelo, it doesn’t break much ground, but it’s a fun effort that’s lifted by a superb “final girl” performance by Mad Men veteran Kiernan Shipka.
Jamie, played by Shipka and almost certainly named after Jamie Lee Curtis, is a teenager in the present day, who lives with her mother (Julie Bowen) in a town that’s haunted by the “Sweet 16 Killer.” On the week of Halloween in 1987, three teenaged girls were stabbed to death on their 16th birthdays, each 16 times, with none of the murders ever solved. The long-ago killings occupy a place in the town that the original killings do in most Halloween sequels.
In the present, the old murders are investigated by a true crime podcaster, in a bit that’s overused in modern-day horror movies. Fortunately, the action soon shifts to an era when podcasting was yet to be invented. A violent incident puts the plot in motion, and because Jamie’s genius best friend Amelia (Kelcey Mawema) has managed to build a time machine, they’re transported back to 1987. There, Jamie re-enactd the George McFly part of Back to the Future, meeting the teenaged version of her own mother (Disney Channel graduate Olivia Holt). Jamie’s posing as an “exchange student,” in her sudden appearance, and explains away her knowledge of what happens in the future by claiming psychic abilities.
Instead of ensuring the timeline and her own future existence by keeping her parents together, like Marty McFly, she’s trying to prevent the murders in the past, while also cutting the killer off before he can murder again in the present. And instead of discovering first hand, like Marty did, that his dad was a huge nerd, Jamie learns that her mom was a mean girl.
The premise allows Totally Killer to do a lot, starting with jokes about 1980s clothes, music and culture-clash humor. There are some time travel paradoxes and changing future timelines, but it never gets too heady or hard-sci-fi. The best joke in the movie comes when Jamie thinks she’s found key evidence—only to discover that the cops in 1987 have no idea what DNA is. Totally Killer recalls the Scream films, especially the early ones, in that the characters seem aware of all the genre tropes, while also specifically name-checking the movies that influenced this one.