Imagine how many followers Jason Voorhees would have had on social media. Tyler MacIntyre’s social slasher is as unique as they come, a blood-soaked splatter fest that borrows the kill-count obsessed mentality of the great ’80s slashers while still having a voice of its own. But rather than a masked madman dismembering his way through unsuspecting teens, Tragedy Girls gives us a new kind of killer, and it’s one that tweets… a lot. In it, two death-obsessed teenage girls who use their online blog about real-life tragedies to send their small mid-western town into a frenzy and cement their legacy as modern horror legends.

So much of Tragedy Girls feels familiar, but the great thing about the movie is that it does so without imitating—its slasher elements are right on the nose, blending that old school kill ’em all style with a really fun and entirely unique twist. Best friends McKayla and Sadie—played wonderfully by Alexandra Shipp and Brianna Hildebrand—are a couple of teenage psychopaths with an obsession for murder and social media—that’s as deadly a combo as you’ll see in 2017, that’s for sure. But the film doesn’t play it straight-faced; it knows exactly what it is, embracing our current social climate and twisting it into a hilarious bloodbath.

I will admit though that I was fully prepared to hate this movie after its first few minutes. The dialog is a little over the top—like, do teenagers really talk like this, fam? Am I really that old? Am I not lit enough for this movie? But in all seriousness, the dialog and its sassy characters are what end up making Tragedy Girls so enjoyable. And it works because it’s so deeply rooted in a teenage world that while it is exaggerated, it never feels forced or unnatural. There’s certainly a message in the movie, too, but it’s not trying to force-feed it to the viewer either. MacIntyre does a fantastic job of balancing those elements, delivering a movie that has something to say and plenty to kill.

I don’t have much to complain about, honestly. The film is constantly evolving and twisting and turning, moving at a killer pace that would make any classic horror villain proud. And while McKayla and Sadie are a terrifying duo, you can’t help but fall for their insane characters—they make Mean Girls look like girl scouts. If I had any issues, however, it was that some of the plotting is a little too convenient and I wish it would have taken more advantage of what was so brilliantly set up in the first act—there’s a cool serial killer angle that it doesn’t fully develop. It’s a rather small hiccup in an otherwise fiercely entertaining slasher that would have no problem tweeting the shit out of your murder.

3.5/5