Directed by Nahnatchka Khan
Written by David Matalon, Jen D’Angelo and Sasha Perl-Raver
Starring:
- Kiernan Shipka as Jamie Hughes
- Olivia Holt as Pam Miller
- Charlie Gillespie as Teen Blake Hughes
- Lochlyn Munro as Adult Blake Hughes
- Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson as Teen Lauren Creston
- Liana Liberato as Tiffany Clark
Release Date: September 8, 2023
Rating: 
Time travel should be the ultimate “holy shit!” moment, but Totally Killer couldn’t care less. Jamie Hughes (Kiernan Shipka) gets tossed into the past and barely blinks. That bizarre lack of wonder becomes the perfect metaphor for the whole damn movie—a half-baked genre mash-up scavenging from its predecessors without ever finding their pulse.
Jamie’s accidental trip to 1987 gives Totally Killer one hell of a playground: a masked murderer, a screwed-up timeline, and a daughter trying to keep Mom from getting carved up. It’s a juicy setup, but the movie never squeezes much juice out of it. Khan piles the slasher, sci-fi, and comedy elements together like a bargain-bin genre stew, but the flavors never mingle. And when Back to the Future starts getting referenced over and over, it feels less like tribute and more like a lazy pop-culture wink.
Instead of giving us a wicked send-up of ’80s culture, Totally Killer settles for pointing at the decade’s uglier habits and snickering. Jamie, the enlightened girl from the present, is dropped into a world of casual misogyny, homophobia, and rampant hedonism, surrounded by broad caricatures who seem designed solely to make the past look ridiculous. But there’s no real bite behind the jokes. The movie isn’t exposing anything so much as checking off its list of “bad ’80s behavior” and congratulating itself for noticing.
There’s some decent slasher meat here, but Totally Killer never knows when to let it simmer. Every time the horror starts generating a little tension, the comedy barges in and smashes the mood to pieces. The sci-fi angle is barely more than a narrative shortcut, with the time machine functioning as a glorified excuse for the plot to keep moving. And despite all those smug little nods to its own cleverness, the movie isn’t especially witty. It’s the cinematic equivalent of someone telling you how funny they are before delivering the joke.
And just when you think Totally Killer might have some fresh blood in its veins, along comes The Final Girls (2015) to remind you that this territory was already covered—and much better. With fewer resources, that film managed to squeeze genuine laughs, heart, and genre affection out of its premise. Totally Killer has plenty of flashy tricks but very little imagination behind them. It’s less a loving send-up than a pop-culture scavenger hunt.
For all the movie’s faults, there are a handful of moments when Totally Killer actually delivers some bloody fun, with the cast showing unexpected enthusiasm once the killing begins. But flashes of competence can’t rescue a film this desperately lacking in personality. Everything is polished to a shiny finish, yet there’s nothing particularly exciting underneath. It’s neither the sharp satire nor the trashy genre romp it seems to think it is. If time travel were on the table, I’d gladly go back and save myself the trouble.
