Horror filmmakers have been struggling for a while now to make the internet seem scary. FearDotCom was a broken URL, Unfriended was quickly blocked and Halloween: Resurrection simply sucked a lot. But I suspect that the real reason these films failed to turn technology into terror was because they were too focused on the technology part. The scariest thing about a weapon isn’t the device itself, it’s the person who wields it.
Tragedy Girls isn’t a horror movie about the internet, it’s a horror comedy about the people who want to use the internet in service of their wickedness. Alexandra Shipp (X-Men Apocalypse) and Brianna Hildebrand (Deadpool) play McKayla and Sadie, two high school students who decide to become serial killers in order to drum up free publicity for their online social media personae, “Tragedy Girls,” who expose and condemn the very violence in society that they are, of course, secretly propagating.
To that end, McKayla and Sadie go hunting for and quickly nab themselves an old-fashioned slasher killer named Lowell, played by Kevin Durand. Ostensibly they want Lowell to teach them the tricks of the trade but it turns out they only really need for third act plot reversals. The majority of Tragedy Girls depicts the acerbic adventures of McKayla and Sadie as they decimate the population of their high school (which they’re actually very good at) and try to reap the rewards on social media (which is harder than it sounds).
SXSW
Tyler MacIntyre’s impish horror comedy spares us the obvious moralizing and melodrama that stems from most celebrity stories. Tragedy Girls is firmly on McKayla and Sadie’s side, and the audience is encouraged to root for them even though they are obviously monsters. It’s an approach that would be off-putting if MacIntyre didn’t strike the right tone. Tragedy Girls evokes the cynicism of Heathers but does so within the eccentric and heightened reality of Better Off Dead. Craig Robinson isn’t just a heroic firefighter, he’s also universally acknoweldged as the strongest, most masculine man in town. Josh Hutcherson isn’t just the coolest kid in school, he’s so damned cool he makes dying seem sexy.
In other words, it’s okay to kill these people. They’re cartoons, but they’re great cartoons, who exhibit just enough emotion to make you like them but not enough to make you lose sleep over their splatstick murder. McKayla and Sadie are wicked but so driven, so distinct, and so well cast that you can’t wait to see what they’ll do next. It’ll probably be evil, it’ll definitely be funny. And one thing’s for sure, Alexandra Shipp and Brianna Hildebrand are the real deal. They’re breakout stars who make this material work.
If there’s a flaw in Tragedy Girls it’s that the film has an inspired inciting incident – catching a serial killer to make him your mentor – and then kind of forgets about it for a while. Kevin Durand is playing just the right type but the movie makes little use of his except as a stray plot point and occasional scapegoat, and it would have been nice to see him interact with the two leads more to make his latter appearances seem less contrived, and to give Alexandra Shipp and Brianna Hildebrand a different dynamic to play with.
But when all is said and done, Tragedy Girls is a victory. It’s a viciously funny horror comedy with memorable characters who, I suspect, will speak to fans of the genre and even win over new recruits. It’s not about the internet at all. It’s about people. And these people are evil bastards. You gotta love ‘em.
The 25 Biggest SXSW Horror Movies Ever:
Top Photo: SXSW
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The 25 Biggest SXSW Horror Movies Ever
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Attack the Block
Before he saved the galaxy in Star Wars, John Boyega saved a rough neighborhood from invading aliens in this acclaimed sci-fi/horror/comedy from writer/director Joe Cornish.
Photo: Screen Gems
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Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
A documentary film crew finds out what horror movie slashers do when they're not killing teenagers in Scott Glosserman's clever cult hit.
Photo: Anchor Bay
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Best Worst Movie
It's not technically a horror movie, but Michael Stephenson's documentary about the making of the worst horror movie ever, Troll 2, and the film's unlikely fanbase is a funny and thoughtful love note to the whole genre.
Photo: Magicstone Productions
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Bubba Ho-Tep
Bruce Campbell gives his greatest performance as an aging Elvis Presley, who teams up with a black JFK to fight a mummy, in Don Coscarelli's unexpectedly moving horror-comedy.
Photo: Vitagraph Films
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Cabin Fever
Eli Roth bursts onto the scene, skin a-peeling, with this low-budget gorefest that earned him an almost immediate spot in the horror firmament.
Photo: Lionsgate
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The Cabin in the Woods
Drew Goddard directed, and co-wrote with Joss Whedon, an ingenious horror satire about a group of college kids getting killed by monsters, and the fascinating reason why this sort of thing happens over and over and over again.
Photo: Lionsgate
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Cheap Thrills
A rich couple offers two poor schlubs money in exchange for... doing stuff, and oh, what stuff it is. E.L. Katz's social thriller became an almost immediate cult classic.
Photo: Drafthouse Films
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Don't Breathe
Fede Alvarez returned to SXSW with a home invasion horror thriller with spectacular style and awesome twists, about a group of teens who break into a blind man's house and discover he's more dangerous than they are. Don't Breathe became a blockbuster when it hit theaters later that year.
Photo: Screen Gems
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Drag Me To Hell
Sam Raimi's long-awaited return to the horror genre did not disappoint. It's a dynamic tale of a woman cursed by a demon, and the great lengths she'll go to in order to save her soul. As you can imagine, Sam Raimi's films the hell out of every single moment.
Photo: Universal Pictures
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Evil Dead
Fede Alvarez's first feature was the unexpectedly fantastic remake of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead, a gory blast of energy that eventually turns the audience's expectations of the original film back around on them.
Photo: TriStar Pictures
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The Eye
SXSW introduced American audiences to the Pang Brothers by premiering The Eye, an acclaimed supernatural medical thriller about a blind woman who receives an eye transplant and discovers she can now see ghosts. (It was later remade as a less-than-impressive Jessica Alba thriller.)
Photo: Mediacorp Raintree Pictures
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The Final Girls
A group of modern teenagers find themselves stuck in a midnight horror movie in The Final Girls, a clever and affectionate satire of the slasher genre, which is now developing a well-deserved cult following.
Photo: Vertical Entertainment
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Insidious
James Wan's grand and guignol supernatural thriller combines suburban strife and very loud noises and spawned a hit horror franchise in the process.
Photo: FilmDistrict
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The Invitation
A man gets invited to his ex-wife's dinner part and can't shake the impression he gets that something is very, very wrong. Karyn Kusama's mature thriller turned out to be one of the best movies of 2016.
Photo: Drafthouse Films
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John Dies at the End
Don Coscarelli's whiling dervish adaptation of the hit novel by David Wong is just as hallucinogenic and hilarious as you'd expect, and turned out to be one of the horror master's finest achievements.
Photo: Magnet Releasing
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Kill List
Ben Wheatley's disquieting horror thriller, about a hitman who discovers disturbing connections between his latest targets, helped catapult the filmmaker to upper echelons of modern horror filmmakers.
Photo: IFC Midnight
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Oculus
A multigenerational story of a family torn apart by, of all things, a haunted mirror. Oculus is an ambitious and impressive supernatural thriller from Mike Flanagan, another filmmaker who became one of the biggest names in the genre after making a big splash at SXSW.
Photo: Relativity Media
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Pontypool
The English-language has been infected with a deadly virus, and a radio shock jock is stuck in his station dealing with the fallout. A strange and marvelous horror concept helped turn Pontypool into a cult favorite.
Photo: Maple Pictures
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A Serbian Film
A Serbian Film helped develop its reputation as one of the most disgusting motion pictures ever made at SXSW. Maybe it's great art, maybe it's just despicable, but either way it's notorious.
Photo: Contra Film
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Sinister
Before he directed Doctor Strange, Scott Derrickson impressed audiences at SXSW with this intelligent and creepy supernatural thriller about a true crime author who moves his family into a house where the previous tenants were murdered under mysterious circumstances.
Photo: Summit Entertainment
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Slither
Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn also got a huge boost from SXSW, where his directorial debut Slither earned raves from the horror community. It's a humorously grotesque motion picture about space slugs that mutate the denizens of a charming small town.
Photo: Universal Pictures
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Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine star as innocent rednecks who are attacked in their own cabin by racist yuppie kids (who assumed the lovable "Tucker and Dale" were going to kill them). Eli Craig's brilliant satire is one of the best and funniest horror comedies of the decade.
Photo: Magnet Releasing
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Under the Shadow
It's bad enough that Shideh is trapped in her apartment by war, sexism and stifling Iranian laws, but now she's might also have a djinn in there too. Babak Anvari's critically-acclaimed supernatural drama is a very scary film and damning social commentary.
Photo: Vertical Entertainment
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V/H/S
An ambitious found footage anthology film, full of scary stories told from the point of view of the victims' or the killers' cameras. V/H/S was a bit of a mixed bag but was such a novelty, and had such great highlights, that it spawned a whole franchise.
Photo: Magnet Releasing
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You're Next
Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett's home invasion thriller subverted audience expectations and became such a huge hit on the festival circuit that fans were a little surprised that it didn't become a blockbuster. Still, You're Next remains one of the most acclaimed horror movies of the decade and it has an absolutely rabid fanbase.
Photo: Lionsgate
