Bystanders (2024)
Premise: These three girls have been invited to a party at these rich frat boys’ cabin in the woods, which would already be a huge red flag even if you didn’t underline “rich” and “they look like the biggest assholes in the room and clearly they’re all about MAGA”.
At the same time, this funny (both “haha, funny!” and “huh, funny”) couple is driving back from a wedding and they happen to find one of those girls…
Under 90 minutes? Yes it is, but it doesn’t feel like it.
Do they say the title? Yes they do!
One sentence review: just shut up and kill me, geez.
Rating: I get what they’re going for and I think that’s cool… but that was not a great movie, it felt extremely long and repetitive. By the time our big couple start doing their thing I thought the movie surely would be over in ten minutes.
To be honest I’ve never been the biggest fan of “rape and revenge” films, even if they’re trying to do something slightly different. It’s just - the actors are trying their best but it’s not amazing, the kills are either tooooooo dragged out or just happen slightly off screen (explained by the clearly low budget so I can forgive that)… but, specially, the biggest problem here is how everyone just goes for the Anime Bad Guy Monologue Where I Explain Stuff And Digress About Killing and… Seriously, at some point it goes from “hah” to “oh my god not again”. And you know what? I know this is something I repeat way too often but as a short this would have been really tight and at the same time effective. And yet.
A simple way to improve it: I checked the letterboxd reviews and they either are a bit too into the movie in a yass queen way… or they give it like zero stars and start to ramble about wokeness (remember, kids: “woke” means “things i don’t like”). With that in mind I think we should really go for it and get super hammy about trying to be “woke”. Like, you want it, you get it: make the bad guys openly have dumb takes about everything (“SAD!”, “you say medicare for all, i say BULLETS FOR YOU”, “oh no, I shat my pants just like my favourite president (trump!)”), make everything else extremely flamboyant for no reason. Like, puzzlingly so, even if it is incoherent. Make our patron saint John Waters go “huh, dude, uhm, chill”. Give them the movie they said they watched.
Alternatively, more of Gray being extremely confident, I think he had some great comedic timing considering he was playing a “makes bad jokes” kind of guy.
Trivia about the IMDb trivia: For once I’m going to invite you to visit the IMDb trivia page because we have one of those cases where you can tell the writer decided to tell anecdotes about the movie. Just like if she was talking to a friend, but writing in third person. It’s similar to how the writer of this review is a really witty person that knows how to poke fun at all the stu- yeah you get what I mean. Anyhoo, it’s something I find funny and very charming in a “I’m so happy about this movie we made” way and it makes me happy.
