Five-Legged Iguana

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

Candidate #4

TRAGEDY GIRLS

(March 2017)

"I'm not a CSI person, but it looked like he was murdered."

This was a tricky one, in that for the most part, Tyler MacIntyre’s Tragedy Girls is a biting satire of today’s social media-obsessed youth.

But what convinced me that the film deserved a candidate’s spot on this year’s ¡Qué horror! list, is the persistent streak of vicious, vicious Vantablack humour that rushes with gleeful malice through its runtime.

For its initial three and a half minutes, Tragedy Girls plays like your standard slasher piece, as we bear witness to a teen couple making out in a car in a lonely isolated locale.

But just before we’re treated to the oh-so-elegantly-‘80’s title card, Tragedy Girls lifts its mask and reveals its subversive, blackly comedic self.

This is a world where the only things that truly matter are hashtags, retweets, and Followers, where the monsters can be found in classrooms, on the football field, and on the screens of your laptops and phones.

Where the adults are incompetent and oblivious, and the youth are at best, callow, self-involved sheep and at worst, sociopathic, narcissistic murderers.

It’s telling that the households of the titular Tragedy Girls aren’t run by abusive parental units from Hell, but rather, well-meaning adults who nonetheless have no idea what their kids are really up to.

It’s like the film is saying, it doesn’t matter how a child is raised anymore; they will be exactly what they choose to be, paving the road to their own personal damnation, one retweet at a time.

"Okay. Well... ummm... if, if Sadie needs like an alibi or, or something just to get her out of a jam, just tell her she can say she was with me watching some Dario Argento movie, okay?"
"Dario DiGiorno."
"Da... Dario Argen... Argento."
"Dario Arpeggio. Mario Wario. I don't know. I don't care. Byezies."

Parting Shot:

There’s a bunch of genre faces in this one, among them: Brianna Hildebrand, Kevin Durand, and an uncredited Josh Hutcherson.

(Tragedy Girls OS courtesy of impawards.com.)