rachel “scene stealer” sennott should be her name. the authenticity of every quip is striking, and even when she’s not the central character of a scene, she’s still off-camera mumbling a remark and it works so hilariously and makes the characters feel incredibly natural. it’s good directing on reijn’s part too — letting the characters speak over one another with, one would assume, a good amount of improv, allows the film to feel as if the audience really was just plopped down inside a mansion with a group of oblivious, insufferable gen-z’ers. 

the film leans heavily into comedy rather than the horror and explores how the faults, the biases, the politics, the social medias, etc etc that are central to an archetypal, wealthy gen-z teenager conflict with their circumstances and how nobody is willing to take the blame for anything. in one moment, a character asks if there might be a gun in the house to protect themselves and another replies, “no, even though they’re wealthy, their politics check out.” then suddenly come act 3, there is a gun, and it is fired many many times. the film works through this structure — a character is murdered, everyone becomes a suspect, and harsh truths are revealed to provide motive and blame someone else. these moments are signifiers of how easily their identities that are mostly borrowed from the liberal twitter echo chamber fail them. 

i do wish we had gotten some more backstory about the friend group. the premise of the film can only go so far and at times it did feel narrow.