Jem Garrard makes fun movies. Between drag queens vs vampires film Slay to the adaptation of RL Stine’s Pumpkinhead, their movies have a sense of fun, silliness, and high energy direction. Buzzkill is no different.
Scripted by Suzanne Keilly, the film concerns Nora (Siena Agudong, Carrie), a Sigma sorority sister who is more than a bit of a disaster. At the start of the movie, Nora is the designated sober sister on the night of a big party, but she fails in her duties, leaving sorority president Sarah (Frances Sholto-Douglas) irate. Not helping matters is the fact that Sarah has just broken up with her boyfriend, James (Dean Goldblum), and is about to get murdered.
Five weeks later, the rest of the Sigmas are ready to move on, but Nora can’t let the past go. As the only (partial) witness to the crime, Nora is adamant that James, who is now in custody, isn’t the killer. Nora believes that she saw something in her inebriated state, and the only way to recover those memories is to get wasted and activate Drunk Nora.
The first act of Buzzkill expeditiously kills off Sarah, lays out Nora’s drunken ambitions, and briefly stages a house intervention with the other sorority girls, among them Brec Bassinger’s southern belle Kendell, Angela Daytona Wu’s meek and agreeable Beth, and OCD cleaner Mika (Jessie Diepeveen). From there, the film is off to the races as the Sigmas contend with pranks from their rivals – the Deltas, host the first stop of a Greek beer crawl, and endeavor to keep Nora sober, lest she sabotage their plans.
Oh, and the killer is taking them out one by one.
Admittedly, the slasher elements, such as the murder set pieces and the killer’s university-themed mask, are fine, but they’re not the main reason to tune in. Rather, Buzzkill’s single greatest assets are watching Nora attempt to get drunk and Beth’s attempts to help her.
Not only is Agudong a charming disaster, but she brings plenty of comedy and warmth to a character that could be grating. Drunk Nora is a terror, but her determination to help, often by folly, makes for some great slapstick moments, and Agudong’s timing is impeccable.
Then there’s Daytona Wu AKA Buzzkill’s secret MVP. The Sigma sister who is routinely forgotten by the other girls is so hilariously amenable to helping Nora that she, at different points in the film, becomes her willing accomplice but is also game to wear a lampshade over her head for most of the third act. One very amusing sequence involves a large number of handcuffs.
In addition to being silly fun, Garrard directs the hell out of the film, deploying whip pans, flipping the camera during scuffles and, in the most inspired directorial touch, deploying red hued freeze frames to denote Drunk Nora’s memories of the past. These interludes are visually distinct from the rest of the film, and the way that Nora moves among the frozen figures to remember things her conscious/sober self has forgotten is visually evocative.
These memories, partnered with scribbles and words that Drunk Nora writes on herself in black sharpie, are the clues that help Nora to solve the mystery of Sarah’s murder and identify the killer. Of course, because Nora was drunk when she crafts them, they’re often ludicrously and maddeningly unhelpful, including the words “A Slut” Nora discovers on her forehead early on.
Watching Nora and Beth as they investigate while trying to procure more alcohol and avoid the judgement of their fellow sorority sisters proves to be great fun. The biggest challenge is that Buzzkill is so focused on its drunken Sherlock and helpful Watson pairing that it doesn’t leave a lot of room for the other girls to make an impression. Bassinger’s aspiring sorority President plays like a mean Elle Woods until her motivations are unpacked in the last act, but most of the other girls are one dimensional, defined by a single characteristic, and/or feel slightly interchangeable.
Despite this, Buzzkill goes down easy. Clocking in at a brief 95 minutes, with decent violence (think a slightly more bloody version of the Happy Death Day films) and featuring fantastic comedic work from Agudong and Daytona Wu, Buzzkill is another solid addition to Tubi’s growing list of comfort horror titles.
Buzzkill begins streaming on Tubi on September 25.
