Tragedy GirlsMIFF, Night Shift seriesDirected: Tyler MaclntyreStars: Brianna Hildebrand, Alexandra Shipp, Kevin DurandRating: ★★★½

FILM REVIEW
By RINA TSE

 Tyler Maclntyre’s Tragedy Girls and Michael Lehmann’s Heathers are an obvious comparison.

Female friendships are as glamorised as the greatest love of your life. Every girl dreams of living with their BFFs happily ever after, but that’s not always how things work.

Tragedy Girls plays like a romantic and authentic high school female friendship between two teenagers who happen to be social media-savvy sociopaths.

While both Tragedy Girls and Heathers include a body count and focus on high school girls, it is obvious that they’re made and set in different eras. The girls’ big hair, shoulder pads, and witty jokes in Heathers make it a definite '80s film.

Meanwhile, Tragedy Girls embraces contemporary technological elements, such as hashtags and emojis, which make it Heathers for the new generation.

As far back as the beginning of the internet, horror films have been endeavouring to embrace and utilize it in a fascinating way. This is perfectly reflected in Tragedy Girls as Sadie Cunningham (Brianna Hildebrand​) and McKayla Hooper (Alexandra Shipp​) document a killing spree through social media. They share a dream of being world-class serial killers to get their moment of recognition.

The film starts off with an all-too-familiar cliché: a boy and a girl parked at a quiet pathway alone at night. Their make-out session gets disturbed by some noise. Seems like another run-of-the-mill horror so far.

But that changes quickly, because this is a setup by Sadie and McKayla, using their classmate Craig Thompson (Austin Abrams) to lure Lowell Orson Lemon (Kevin Durand), aka "The Rosedale Ripper".

They kidnap him hoping that he can train them into serial killers. The girls keep him captive as Lowell rejects their request.

The pair’s thirst for internet fame adds fuel to the fire, where their crushes are being murdered and prom committee conflicts are sparked.

Tragedy Girls is 96 minutes of excitement, horror and gruesomeness. It’s fast-paced, it’s fun, it’s a perfect blend of horror and comedy, and it’s entertaining even for people who don’t fancy the horror genre.

For a movie built on the foundation of millennial satire and misconduct of social media, it successfully conveys what it promised: a facetious horror comedy about two death-obsessed teenage girls who get crueller and more dreadfully creative to get the rubbernecking they deserve.

No, it isn’t a replica of Heathers. It’s even better. Keep your eyes open Heathers, because Tragedy Girls is coming to take you down.