Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Totally Killer’ on Amazon Prime Video, a Consistently Funny Satirical Mashup of Horror, Sci-fi and Teen-Comedy Tropes

I can’t remember – did we ever get Friday the 13th: Jason Jumps Through Time? If not, then Totally Killer (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) is an innovator, a semi-gimmicky mashup of the slasher and time-travel genres, starring Kiernan Shipka (Mad Men, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) as a modern teen who finds herself dodging knives and un-P.C. sentiments after she tumbles back to 1987. If that doesn’t sound fun enough already, then let it be known that the film is directed by Nahnatchka Khan, whose previous effort, Always Be My Maybe, is quite possibly the smartest, funniest rom-com of the 21st century so far. Will Totally Killer be the follow-up it deserves? Let’s find out. 

TOTALLY KILLER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The setting: The town of Vernon, um, I don’t know what state. Does it matter? Not in the slightest. It’s an American small town full of townies who all know each other, and that’s the important thing. It’s Halloween, 2023, and we’re told it’s the 35th anniversary of the darkest time in Vernon history, which occurred in 1987. (Don’t do the math; I’m not sure the screenwriters did.) That was when three teenage girls were murdered by a slasher in a black leather jacket and a grinning mask that looks like Max Headroom sans sunglasses. They each were stabbed 16 times, probably for sweetness’ sake. Pam (Julie Bowen) was not one of them, because otherwise she wouldn’t be alive to make her teen daughter Jamie (Shipka) overcompensate for past tragedies by taking self-defense classes and carrying pepper spray and a rape whistle. So Jamie’s prepared, even as she rolls her eyes in annoyance at the whole thing. 

At this point, I’m not quite sure what to reveal about the plot, so I’ll tread carefully. But I will say that, of course, the killer returns, and what with one thing and another, Jamie ends up being chased into her bestie’s nonfunctional time machine that suddenly jolts to life and deposits her in 1987, mere days before the homicides and, more importantly, two years after Back to the Future, which makes it way easier for her to explain her situation to the teenage version of her bestie’s mom. Fresh off the wayback machine, Jamie encounters frizzy hair, cigarettes and Gloria Vanderbilt, all on the same woman. Egads, I say. Egads.

Since she’s back here, she might as well try to stop the murders from happening, right? Sure. She walks to Vernon High, grimaces at the American Indian mascot logo, and is shocked at how easy it is to pretend to be Jamie LaFleur, exchange student from Canada. I mean, nobody even bothers to check out her paperwork or anything. They just give her clothes for gym class and let her get battered bloody during a vicious game of dodgeball. She’s also shocked to learn that the teenage version of her mother (Olivia Holt) is a bully who belongs to a clique of catty rhymes-with-ditches (note: the phrase “mean girls” must be avoided, as it wasn’t invented yet) who call themselves the Mollies because they idolize Molly Ringwald. And guess who the other three Mollies are? Right – the soon-to-be murderees. Uh oh. Troubling. Same goes for her father (Charlie Gillespie), who’s a grade-A himbo. Two key things to know before we wrap up ye olde summary here: One, since she knows what’s about to happen, and where, and how, and when, she passes herself off as a psychic, which is an easier explanation to swallow than the time-travel thing. And two, Totally Killer doesn’t subscribe to the same time-travel rules as Back to the Future, so that bit where Michael J. Fox has to make sure his parents fall in love lest he disappear isn’t relevant here, but the situation does inspire some pretty good jokes.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Well, the script references Scream and Back to the Future right there in the text. I’ll add another one: Hot Tub Time Machine, a movie I have a soft spot for. A very intelligence-challenged soft spot.

Performance Worth Watching: Lots of supporting cast members lean heavily into the primary joke, with a hearty yield of quality jokes. But it’s Shipka’s movie to hold together, and hold it together she does, even when it tries to do too much and ends up veering here and there and everywhere. 

Memorable Dialogue: “Would a serial killer wear Gloria Vanderbilt? No!”

Sex and Skin: If Totally Killer REALLY wanted to spoof ’80s slashers and teen comedies, it’d have tons of it. But it has none. 

Our Take: First of all, one glaring anachronism: RoboCop came out in 1987, but there’s no way it was available on home video yet. The gap between theatrical and VHS releases was GIGANTIC back then. Just enormous. Sometimes literal years would go by before you could rent a movie. It was frustrating as hell, but hey, back then, you appreciated shit because you had to wait for it and fostered gobs and gobs of pent-up anticipation. And that’s the way it was and we liked it.

Where was I? Right – Totally Killer. It’s kind of a mess, but a pretty damn funny one. The mechanics of the time-travel stuff are shrugged into the plot and shrugged back out at the end; can’t get into the details of it when there are jokes to deliver. And that’s the emphasis here – comedy. If we’re laughing, then we don’t care that the plotting is slapdash and haphazard; or that the movie stretches itself thin trying to spoof slasher flicks, John Hughes coming-of-age films and time-travel sci-fi extravaganzas, while also being a barely half-assed whodunit; or that many of the jokes are variations on the same culture-shock bit where a Gen Z kid can’t get over how cruel everyone is in 1987. “Is no one here in touch with their emotions?” she asks at one point, and of course, she gets her ass laughed right out of the room by all the ultrahorny blowjob-obsessed teenagers who casually throw around homophobic slurs while slugging down screwdrivers and suppressing trauma. Because Gen X is obviously superior, a resilient and enduring group of toughs squinting cynically at subsequent generations of squishy-melty-mooshy marshmallow people.

I kid, of course. I liked that the film doesn’t remember the ’80s as much as it shish-ka-bobs the ’80s on a very pointy skewer. The other end is pointy too, taking jabs at new-gen sensitivity-culture, and making one salient point: What’s more insensitive, a callous approach to others’ emotions, or the recent trend of true-crime exploitation (embodied by a 2023 podcaster character who insists he’s “investigating” crimes)? None of it is necessarily nasty or critical, though – it’s slyly observant, which is key to the movie’s playful spirit. Khan doesn’t seem particularly concerned that the many gears of the plot don’t quite function in concert with each other, or that it tends to be a lumpy hodgepodge of ideas and scenes that function more like a satirical shotgun than a sniper. Instead, she hones in on character and jokes jokes jokes, rendering the movie’s just-wing-it style endearing. Totally. 

Our Call: The fact that Khan eventually makes all this work is quite the feat. Whether it’s totally killer is debatable, but mostly killer? For sure. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.