Blast from the Past!

Amazon Prime Video

3.5/5 stars

Once again, another season of the Eerie Horror Festival has come and gone and like years past, it provided plenty of spooky fun. In addition to the film screenings, seminars and meet-and-greets, this year's fest gave us some interesting new events like a special screening of Night of the Living Dead featuring a new score performed live by Morricone Youth, and a pitch competition among six aspiring screenwriters. The fest truly went out with a bang thanks to an incredible concert by the Italian rock group and film score extraordinaires Goblin.

But, like in years prior, the real stars of the Horror Fest were the films themselves and one of the highlights this year was a special screening of Blumhouse's new horror/comedy Totally Killer. The film wears its ridiculous premise proudly on its sleeve and, as a result, has plenty of laughs and thrills to spare.

In 1987, three teenage girls were killed by a masked killer on the nights leading up to Halloween. Thirty-five years later, Pam Hughes (Julie Bowen), friend of all three victims, has fears that she would be next realized when the killer returns to murder her and then go after her teenage daughter Jamie (Kiernan Shipka). In a series of events too convoluted to explain, Jamie escapes the killer by traveling back in time to 1987. Now she teams up with her mother (now played by Olivia Holt) and her friends to stop the killer and save her mother in the future. But she soon learns that every action in the past will alter the future in unexpected ways.

The film has a premise so silly that it can only be enjoyed with one's tongue firmly in cheek, but it works because the filmmakers are clearly having as much fun with it as the audience should be. Director Nahnatchka Khan uses the time travel plot to make some funny jokes about the cliches of '80s teen slasher movies as well as the contrivances of time travel films (mainly Back to the Future). Meanwhile, the scenes in the present have a fun time ridiculing society's current obsession with so-called "True Crime" stories. The film is ultimately more concerned with laughs than scares, but that makes it the perfect Halloween viewing with some friends looking to have a good time. 

If you missed the Horror Fest screening, Totally Killer is now available on Amazon Prime.

Directed by Nahnatchka Khan // Written by David M. Matalon, Jen D'Angelo, and Sasha Perl-Raver // Starring Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Charlie Gillespie, Lochlym Munro, Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson, Kimberly Huie, Kelcy Mawema, Liana Liberato, Sophi Chin-Salvo, Anna Diaz, Ella Choi, Patti Kim, Randall Park, and Julie Bowen // 106 minutes // Amazon Prime Video // Rated 'R'