'Bodies, Bodies, Bodies' and it's uniquely gen-z horror.

Ever wanted to meet and discuss movies the way book clubs discuss books?

You can, with the Strawberry Cinema Collective—a project by me and Caro of Sensual Terrors. Every third Wednesday of the month at 7pm EST we meet to discuss a different film.

In July, we watched Bodies, Bodies, Bodies (2000) dir. Halina Reijn. Full of queerness, class-divides, friend group drama, Gen Z dialogue, and murder, this film is a favorite of ours.

Read until the end to find out what we’ll be watching for this month.

It was so nice to revisit this film, like all of our previous Strawberry Cinema Collective picks, because it gives us beautiful, dirty, imperfect representation. Often times, marginalized people, who have been shut out of the media, want to see themselves on screen. Women, people of color, people with disabilities and so on: We want to see ourselves as more than the film.

Bodies Bodies Bodies walks that tricky line of making the marginalized people the villain, while not having its LGBTQ characters reduced to their wrongdoings. It’s special when an artist can create a character that’s the villain, without villainizing the community that character comes from.

This discussion reminded me that 1) Halina Reijn is so much more than Babygirl, which rubbed me the wrong way, and 2) there’s nothing like a juicy little murder mystery. My recommendation? If you love this bloody bubblegum whodunit, check out my list of other pink horror recs here.

I was definitely a fan of this film going in, so it was so much fun to get to chat about one of my horror favorites.

Growing up in private schools and having to constantly interact with kids who never had to worry about money (and probably never will) in their entire lives, I definitely related to Bee a lot. I was always the girl who brought food to the event and made sure to call her mom to check in so she wouldn’t worry.

A lot of what we talked about in our discussion had to do with these kinds of class divides, and the inherent feeling of Bee being an outsider from the very beginning. We also talked about how those differences affected her and Sophie’s relationship.

I remember pointing out that as soon as Sophie starts interacting with her friends, it seems like she doesn’t even care about Bee at all, with how little Sophie seems to care about Bee’s discomfort in this group. However, as we analyzed their interactions, it’s clear that Sophie loves Bee. Sophie feels comfortable in this environment, it feels normal to her, and so she likely doesn’t even realize Bee might be uncomfortable in that environment. It’s not something she’d ever think about. But when you’re the outsider, it feels so awkward as you try to adapt to this new kind of culture. It felt like everyone in the film was speaking a different language than Bee.

That’s one of my favorite things about the film—the language. It feels so specific to the Gen Z vernacular, from such a specific era, that it feels like a time capsule. It’s definitely fun to watch and look back at what was popular in that moment (like TikTok and Pete Davidson). Even the casting felt based in trend. We talked about Pete Davidson’s very public life, and how that changed how we experienced the film. It all felt very intentional.

Come chat with us about womanhood, body horror, and the beauty standard with this modern horror classic that created such a huge cultural wave.

Now, it’s great to hear a summary, but I think it’s even better to hear from our speakers themselves and to chat about these films in real time.

With our shift to the live stream format, we want to make sure to encourage everyone to participate, because what makes this club cool is that we get to hear from so many different people. We want to hear your questions, comments, opinions, or just your random thoughts.

If there’s a topic you want to make sure we focus on, you can let us know at any time before (or during) the discussion.

Next time, make sure to join us!!

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