This one’s been sitting in my queue for the better part of the last decade. It got in there mostly on merits of the cast and the fun idea posed by the trailer.
Tragedy Girls is about a pair of BFFs navigating their last year of high school while also trying to make a bit of a splash… as serial killers. Also, they have a blog about… serial killers… where they try to hype up the murders they’ve been committing.
Problem is, the incompetent cops in their little town keep chalking up the deaths to accidents and natural causes.
Needless to say, the when an actual serial killer shows up, the girls jump at the chance to learn from a “pro”… and promptly discover that he’s not all that great and their plans are generally better.
Hilarity ensues.
Well, if you like dark satire about fame-seeking, social media addiction, ineffective law enforcement, and oblivious adults.
This did well enough when it came out that the director/co-writer has gone on to do a handful of other things that I’ve enjoyed well enough. I can definitely see the draw… it certainly amused me. But, just like a couple of the other things, it feels like it’s lacking something more.
The first half is pretty solid on the satire. Both of slasher tropes and social media tropes of the time (which are kind of quaint compared to social media nearly a decade later). But then things change tone a little for most of the last hunk of the film and it feels a bit more like a high school romcom (with murder) than the cutting satire that was initially set up.
By the end, some of the initial feel is reclaimed, but for something that could have hit like some classic favorites of mine (like Heathers), there’s just no “boom” in it all.
For the most part, the performances are prefect for the tone the film goes for. Kind of vapid and over-rehearsed (because everything our main characters do is performative, rather than genuine) punctuated with kills that never quite go as planned and some genuine friendship highs and lows that come from all that. Brianna Hildebrand and Alexandra Shipp are delightful in how they play off of each other. And Jack Quaid, as always, is absolutely adorkable.
If you’re a long-time horror fan, you’ll see more than a couple of references to some slasher classics. Probably most notably Halloween, which gets directly referenced visually more than a couple of times. So that’s a little extra bit of fun.
For me, though, this didn’t cut as sharp or deep about the issues at its core as I think it could have. That left it feeling as shallow in some ways as it’s main characters are. Which, I suppose, could be considered oddly appropriate… but I’ve seen better.
- Tragedy Girls – October 18, 2026
- Crystal Lake – October 17, 2026
- Street Fighter (2026) – October 15, 2026
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