Review: Tragedy Girls
Social Media is kind of scary. The power we permit it over our everyday lives is frankly, insane. And yet we're almost all guilty of it. We live in an era where our every moment is captured on varying apps and shared with friends, followers or even strangers. As time progresses too social media has grown to be something all the more baffling. 'Influencers' can now make tremendous amounts of money from Snapchat, Instagram or YouTube simply by pimping products and creating content that's devoured by their followers. And so the power of social media continues to grow as it now offers the age-old dream of wealth and fame. It's a scary thought to imagine how far some might go in order to fulfill that dream of social media fame and wealth.
Enter Tyler MacIntyre's Tragedy Girls.
Telling the story of two teenage besties, Sadie and McKayla, whom start a Twitter page covering a spat of brutal murders in their small town. Calling themselves the Tragedy Girls, the pair then trap the serial killer responsible (played by the super creepy Kevin Durand), forcing him to form an allegiance with them so they'll have first hand coverage of the murders for their social media account. It's a disturbing concept deftly played for nervous laughter by stars Brianna Hildebrand and Alexandra Shipp.
Horror hounds will adore this entry into the slasher genre as it playfully reworks the usual genre cliches, adding a modern layer to the high school body count thriller. The social media angle and the character's constant usage of Twitter makes the film feel very much in the present, the rabid Tragedy Girl followers almost mirroring the audience in their morbid fascination with these two girls and the small town murders.
MacIntyre makes sure to appease gore-hounds with some truly nasty death scenes, including a particularly gruesome free-weights accident and packs the film with references to classic horror filmmakers and films (hilariously, one of the girls lends a copy of the French extreme classic, Martyrs, to another classmate). It goes to show the filmmakers love of the genre and passion to deliver a horror film first, a comedic satire second.
And the comedy works wonders, but it's always punctuated by the alarming realization that these characters are truly, madly insane and their thirst for fame is all the more frightening when we realize that we all know teenagers like this. Er, teenagers obsessed with social media, not teen serial killers. Anyway, the solid performances by both leads, the unsettling performance by Kevin Durand and the walloping one-two punch of comedy and gore make Tragedy Girls a worthy entry into modern horror.
Tragedy Girls has no current UK or Irish release date, but is currently available on Blu-Ray from Gunpowder & Sky in Region A format. If you're ordering make sure you have all-region capability. Click the link below to order now.