Review: 'Totally Killer' is a Sharp Time-Travel Slasher Perfect for Halloween

There is no perfect recipe for a good slasher movie. But there are some staples that should be included for an entertaining one, and above all else queer director Nahnatchka Khan's "Totally Killer" is indeed entertaining.

One might argue that the mainstream slasher movie was technically invented by Alfred Hitchcock in 1965's "Psycho," or, if you want to get thoroughly modern, "Friday the 13th." But "Totally Killer" tends to lean more toward the contemporary. It has more in common with "Scream" and "Happy Death Day" than "Halloween" or "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Still, Khan incorporates some of the elements from those movies into her own, and it all adds up to a suspenseful but funny whodunit.

Kiernan Shipka ("Chilling Adventures of Sabrina") plays Jamie Hughes, a 17-year-old suburban high schooler who is fighting against the squall of helicopter parenting. Her mother Pam (Julie Bowen) and dad Blake (Lochlyn Munro) seem overly concerned about her safety, especially when Halloween comes around. There's a reason for that: Thirty-five years ago, their town was hit with a series of murders by a masked serial killer who was never caught.

Jamie's quantum physics-minded bestie Amelia (Kelcey Mawema) has been working on a time-traveling photo booth as a school science project, but can't get it to work. It turns out it's missing an extra metal conductor. We find that out because the masked killer has returned and trapped Jamie inside it, inadvertently stabbing the control panel with a hunting knife and sending our heroine back to 1987.

From here, Jamie tries to save the victims who died 35 years prior, meeting her teen mom and dad in the process. This is where the film really shines. It seems the '80s were a lenient decade in which you didn't need background checks to register for school and bullying was not only commonplace, but endorsed by teachers. There was no such thing as a social justice warrior, and political correctness was only an idea.

One scene made me think of the recent movie "No Hard Feelings," in which Jennifer Lawrence's character barges into a modern college house party looking for someone. As she opens each bedroom door, the teenage couples are either on their phones or playing with their VR headsets, to which Lawrence says, "Doesn't anyone fuck anymore?"

In "Totally Killer," Jamie does the same thing, but sex is the goal. In fact, the girls constantly talk about giving "blow jobs" as if it was a rite of passage. Times have changed. In true '80s slasher form one of the girls' horniness puts her face to face with the killer.

Kahn unironically plays with the "Back to the Future" storyline. That movie came out in 1985, two years before the time Jamie is trapped. It's a clear attempt to piggyback on that space-time continuum theory to keep this one less complicated. There is one difference, though, which I won't spoil here.

A lot of "period" movies try to convince you that you are actually in whatever time the movie takes place. "Totally Killer" does the same thing, and overall it works, but sometimes it feels forced. There is a scene with a pile of video tapes with handwritten labels denoting the names of popular movies of the time such as "Buckaroo Bonzai," "Terminator," and "The Empire Strikes Back." It's a heavy-fisted attempt at immersion that feels strained.

Shipka is really the one who sells the premise. It is on her shoulders to convince the audience that this young Gen Z-er has travelled back to the age of pre-boarding TSA checks and freestyle music. There are moments of real confusion on her face when confronted with outdated fat-shaming jokes or homophobic harassment.

What was common then seems edgy now. Jamie has become the conservative one, and Shipka's realization of that through facial expressions and body language adds flourish to her already fine acting abilities.

The entire cast is terrific. Of note is Olivia Holt, who plays Jamie's mother as a teen, and Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson as Lauren. It might be easy to get lost in all the forced logic the movie supports, but it doesn't really matter. Time travel scripts always have convoluted plots.

In the end "Totally Killer" would not have made the studio money theatrically because it doesn't have the star power to draw people in. But it's perfect for streaming, and perfect for Halloween. It's a is a quantum leaping energetic slasher tailor-made for Gens X through Z.

"Totally Killer" streams on Prime Oct. 6..