Film / Totally Killer

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Totally Killer is a 2023 Horror Comedy directed by Nahnatchka Khan, written by David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver, and Jen D'Angelo, and co-produced by Jason Blum under his Blumhouse Productions banner. It was released on 28th September 2023.

In 1987, Pam (Olivia Holt) survived a horrible massacre that claimed her three best friends by a notorious Serial Killer known only as the "Sweet Sixteen Killer".

Thirty-five years later, her daughter Jamie Hughes (Kiernan Shipka) decides to spend her Halloween outside all alone, ignoring her insistence to stay at home. Unknown to both of them, the killer shows up at their doorstep as more than just a trick-or-treater to end what he started by finishing off Pam (Julie Bowen) and going after Jamie.

Thanks to an ensuing cat-and-mouse chase and a photo booth time machine, Jamie travels to the year 1987 before that fateful night. Not wanting a future where her mother is dead, Jamie teams up with her teenage mom to change destiny and stop the Sweet Sixteen Killer once and for all.

The film is the fourth Blumhouse slasher comedy inspired by a classic comedy fantasy plot, with this film deriving much of its premise from Back to the Future (1985). It is preceded by Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U (time-loop films both inspired by Groundhog Day), and Freaky (a body-swap film inspired by the plot conceit defining the various versions of Freaky Friday).

The trailer can be watched here.

Contains the following tropes:

• The '80s: The majority of the movie takes place in the year 1987 and it shows with the hair, the fashion, the abundant usage of hard drugs and the lingo.
• '80s Hair: The Mollys, especially Pam, have big poofy hair just like you would see in 1987 although it isn't as frizzy as most examples.
• Action Mom: Pam has spent the last 35 years training herself and her daughter in martial arts in case the killer comes back while also having guns, knives, pepper spray, and alarms hidden around her house.
• Action Survivor: Jamie and Pam. While 2023 Pam is a borderline Action Girl having spent the last 30 years preparing for the event she's targeted by a serial killer, and suitably puts up quite a fight, Jamie is a normal high schooler who, while possessing enough self defence knowledge to fend off the killer, is still mostly a normal young woman without much physical capabilities. 1987 Pam meanwhile has none of that, but manages to improvise enough to save Jamie a few times.
• Alas, Poor Villain: While he was wrong to seek it out through murder, Doug was justified in at least wanting revenge on the Mollys for getting his girlfriend killed. He was otherwise a kind misguided kid.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent:
  • Amelia's father is never seen nor mentioned, so for one reason or another it appears that her mom's a single mother.
  • Kara's mother, conversely, never appears in the film nor gets mentioned.
• Angst? What Angst?: Invoked. Jamie notes that Pam seemed so cheerful despite having a threat from an uncaught serial killer hanging over her for thirty-five years. This turns out to be Foreshadowing: she didn't. Chris lied to Jamie about that to hide the fact that he killed Pam.
• Arc Number: The Sweet Sixteen Killer get their name from targeting their three victims on their Sweet Sixteen birthday and always leaving their bodies with sixteen stab wounds as their Calling Card. This was a deliberate choice on Doug's part in order to hide his true motive of avenging his deceased girlfriend.
• Artistic License - Firearms: Jamie uses a nailgun to shoot nails like a firearm by simply pulling the trigger, but real nailguns are specifically designed so that they can't be used this way. They have a second trigger by the barrel that needs to be pressed against a surface before firing.
• Artistic License – Linguistics: When Randy is amused by the term "murder cabin," he shouts, "'Murder cabin'? Let's go!" The phrase "let's go" was commonly used as a cheer or encouragement to take action (e.g. "Let's go, Yankees!" or "Let's go kick ass!") in the 1980s but not as a general celebration or expression of happiness until many years later.
• Asshole Victim: The reason why The Mollys (sans Pam) were targeted by the Sweet Sixteen Killer aka Doug Summers was because his beloved girlfriend Trish died in a car crash when they invited her for a sleepover pretending to be her friend, got her drunk in hopes of spilling the beans if she had slept with their gym coach and let her drive home while incredibly wasted. Jamie is not happy that she had been helping to prevent the deaths of indirect murderers and bullies who were not even sorry for their actions the entire time. Tiffany is the ringleader of the three, and her nastiness is even lampshaded by how everyone is upbeat the day after her death and Pam quickly admits that Tiffany was a cruel person with an awful sense of humor.
• Babies Ever After: After the whole ordeal of the Sweet Sixteen killer was over, Pam and Blake hooked up almost immediately and conceived a child together since Jamie wasn't there to stop them anymore. This results in Jamie (now Colette) having a 34-year-old older brother also named Jamie who in turn had a three-year-old daughter named Veronica with his husband Jason.
• Bait-and-Switch: When adult Pam is attacked by the killer, she seems to drive him off, only for an identically dressed killer to emerge and attack her from behind moments later, suggesting that there might be two killers. Later, Jamie outright wonders whether there are two killers. Later still, the group kills the killer, but a second killer emerges, confirming the foreshadowing. But then it turns out that the second killer is from the future, so there was only one original killer, and Pam was only attacked by one person, who simply snuck around behind her after leaving her sight.
• Battle Couple: Blake and Pam become Sickeningly Sweethearts pretty quickly and fight the killer together during his second and third attacks.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Jamie claims to the guy running the Quantum Drop that she and Lauren were sent by the city to temporarily shut the ride down. He's easily convinced because that means he gets to go on break early.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Despite being quite close with the other Mollys, Pam was spared in the original killing spree. Doug mentions that she had always been kind to him after she's murdered by the copycat killer. Coupled with her not being at the sleepover that lead to Trish's death is what kept Doug from including her in his spree.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Doug is a polite, nerdy hall monitor who likes video games and has to sneak into the cool kids' parties. In the climax, it turns out he's a Sympathetic Murderer out to avenge the death of his girlfriend, and while his friendly and dorky demeanor is no act, it won’t stop him from at the very least injuring innocents who get in his way.
• Big Bad Ensemble: There turn out to be two Sweet Sixteen Killers: Doug Summers who committed the original murders in 1987 to avenge his dead girlfriend and Chris Dubusage who was planning to have the killer resurface in 2023 so he can continue his Trashy True Crime podcast.
• Bland-Name Product: One murder scene has been turned into a Zattaburger, a fictional chain clearly riffing on Whattaburger.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Mollys with Pam as the Blonde, Marissa and Heather as the Brunettes and Tiffany as the Redhead.
• Bookends: The movie begins with Pam and Blake showing off their Halloween costumes to their daughter Jamie as Claire Standish from The Breakfast Club and Zac Efron specifically from 17 again, which serves as a reminder of how they are past their prime and the events of 1987 Halloween haunted them. The flim's ending has them showing off their couple-coordinated costumes as Mr And Mrs Smith, symbolising how her parents have let go of the past and into a bright future ahead.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Naturally, any attempt Jamie makes to explain the time travel situation to the police or anyone else gets mocked at best. The only person who believes her is Lauren, the actual inventor of time travel herself, and even she was only convinced because nobody knew about her journal but her.
  • Similarly, in the present, Amelia tries to inform 2023 Blake and Kara that Jamie was sent back in time via her now-missing time machine. Neither of them believes her, and the only one interested in hearing her out is the killer, Chris, who has reason to believe since he witnessed it when he attacked her.
  • Jamie's initial attempt to prevent the killing involves just directly approaching her mom and her friend group and trying to insert herself so she can warn them. Pam and the Mollys are a trio of Alpha Bitch mean girls and Jamie is a short, skinny, and socially awkward new girl whose first introduction to them is being humiliatingly dominated in a game of dodgeball. Naturally, every attempt she makes to protect them is mocked, and Jamie herself is frequently bullied by the Mollys.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Jamie makes a reference to Scream. The sixth movie, which was released in 2023, co-stars Liana Liberato, who plays Tiffany in this film.
  • Jamie also mentions Avengers: Endgame. Randall Park appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Agent Woo in Ant-Man and the Wasp and WandaVision and in this film as Sheriff Dennis Lim in 1987. Furthermore, Jamie's mother Pam in 1987 is played by Olivia Holt, who played Dagger in Cloak & Dagger (2018).
• Chaste Hero: Somewhat fitting for a Final Girl, Jamie notably lacks any love interest and is the least horny teenager in the group. Partly justified by the time travel nature of the story rendering pretty much any potential romance awkward, not to mention a reflection of the vastly different culture towards sex among teenagers between the 1980s and the 2020s, and she doesn't appear to be dating anyone in the present either. She does briefly express attraction to a shirtless guy at the party, until invokedshe realizes that's her dad.
• Cheated Death, Died Anyway: Marissa manages to escape her original fate of being the second victim of the Sweet Sixteen Killer with Heather taking her place and was able to take down the killer alongside the group, only for the Copycat Killer from the future to appear out of nowhere and slit her throat just moments after the original threat was over.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Pam insisted on Jamie keeping a good luck crystal and rape alarm on her person at all times. These items help Jamie in her time-travelling adventure by showing the former to teenaged Pam to convince her she's psychic and giving the latter to Marissa as a defense mechanism from the Sweet Sixteen Killer (Although it's subverted since Marissa gets killed anyway with or without the rape alarm).
  • Lauren's backpack contains a nail gun which proves instrumental in the climax when Jamie nails the Sweet Sixteen Copycat multiple times in the chest with.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Pamela enrolled Jamie in self-defense classes ever since she was seven which proved useful in giving her the strength and fighting chance needed to face the Sweet Sixteen killer head-on.
  • In 1987, Doug makes a brief mention of having a black belt in karate. This explains how he, as the Sweet Sixteen Killer, was able to decently fight off even jocks that are considerably more muscular than him, like Blake and Randy.
• Close-Enough Timeline: Once Jaime returns to 2023, the timeline is entirely different thanks to her intervention in 1987 but similar enough that she can continue her life as a normal teenage girl with her mother still alive. However, the biggest adjustment Jaime has to face is not being an only child anymore since she now has a 34-year-old brother who was given her original name and she is called "Colette" instead.
  Jamie: [sighs] Fucking time-travel...
• Closet Geek: The teenage Pam warns Lauren and Jamie not to let anyone else know that she's a sci-fi fan as evidenced by her massive collection of VHS tapes of iconic sci-fi movies.
• Cosmic Deadline: Parodied. Jamie's smartphone will eventually run out of charge, which will leave her Trapped in the Past. You know, the thing that can be charged by connecting two pieces of cable and a 12V battery, both readily accessible in 1987.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Pam has spent 35 years training herself and her daughter in martial arts in case the killer comes back while also having guns, knives, pepper spray, and alarms hidden around her house, refusing to let Jamie go to concerts unsupervised, and even keeping a psychic good luck crystal around as a last resort.
  • Teen Kara impales Doug (the original Sweet Sixteen killer) with an actual scythe that her sheriff father gave her for safety. Additionally, her father provided her with a gun, which she uses to defend herself and the others.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Sweet Sixteen Copycat gets one courtesy of Jamie nailing him several times in the chest before pushing the wannabe true crime podcaster into the walls of the Quantum Drop where he violently explodes into a spray of pink mist.
• Deadline News: When the Sweet Sixteen Killer chases Jamie and teen Pam, he stabs Norm Dubasage the reporter in the head.
• Deconstruction: This movie deromanticizes 80s nostalgia by showcasing how irresponsible, unaware, thoughtless, and reckless people of the decade actually were. And not it's only Played for Laughs from the unfortunate experiences Jamie runs into, it also demonstrates how the Sweet Sixteen Killer managed to get away with murder in the first place. From the callousness of potential eyewitnesses to the unsecured police system to the amount of drugs and alcohol people took that made them less likely to focus on the main conflict. It's more telling when it's revealed that the Sweet Sixteen Killer, aka Doug, targeted the Mollys (sans Pam) for a bullying incident that led to the death of his girlfriend; they and the other popular kids Jamie followed were quite blissfully ignorant, only becoming more proactive and cooperative at the hands of Heather's death in the changed timeline.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • One of the people Jamie first encounters in 1987 is a mother smoking a cigarette and thinking aloud about doing cocaine right in front of her kids but brushes it off as them being too young to know any better. The mother then offers Jamie a ride to Vernon High School, ignoring her objections about getting into a car with a stranger, while she continues smoking cigarettes without rolling down the car windows and with her kids and Jamie inside.
  • There was a guy with a t-shirt boasting the words "FBI: Federal Booby Inspector" which is highly inappropriate as Jamie points out but he and his wife don't find any problem with it.
  • Jamie encounters quite a bit of casual racism, sexism, and homophobia. Homophobic slurs are constantly being dropped, all the teenagers have terrible attitudes towards women (even the women themselves), and the Vernon High mascot is a Native American caricature called the "Red Devil". Jamie is suitably horrified by all of it.
  • The school has next to no basic safeguarding, allowing Jamie to just stroll around and attend classes without any enrollment paperwork, and find a student's class information by just asking for it. The receptionist actually scoffs at the idea of keeping such information secret.
  • Nearing the climax, Jamie is surprised by the fact that dangerous carnival rides are casually left unattended.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The Sweet Sixteen Killer was revealed posthumously to be Doug. Besides the mention about him being skilled in martial arts, not many hints were dropped before the reveal. His motivations only became clear in the subsequent dialogue between the survivors, when Marisa admits that Trish (Doug's girlfriend) died from a bullying incident triggered by the Mollys.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Doug Summers and Chris Dubasage were coined with the endearing nicknames of "Dork" Summers and Chris "Douche-basage" by their peers in their teenaged years.
• Everyone Has Standards: Pam is horrified when Jamie considers the possibility that she was responsible for Trish's death.
• Evil Is Petty: Chris Dubusage, as the copycat of the Sweet Sixteen Killer, killed Pam and the new timeline Marisa and attempted to kill Jamie twice only for the sake of rekindling his dying podcast. Chris also killed his own father just because he cared more about his work than about his son, or at least it's what Chris claims.
• Expy: Unsurprisingly, the major characters drew direct parallels with characters from Back To The Future film.
  • No prizes for pointing out that Jamie and Lauren are basically Marty McFly and Doctor Emmett Brown respectively. The former being the Fish out of Temporal Water while the latter being the "crazy" person who fixed the time machine allowing the protagonist to go back to the future. In a slight twist, Lauren's daughter Amelia plays the Doctor Brown role in the present.
  • And of course, Pam and Blake are like Lorraine and George McFly, whom the protagonist witnesses their own parents falling in love with. What differs is that while Marty McFly of Back To The Future desperately tries to get his parents together, in this film Jamie does NOT want her parents to hook up that early, partly because her priorities are focused on catching the murderer and partly because she's not supposed to be born for nearly another 2 decades. While Jamie did succeed in stopping the murderer(s, she failed to stop her parents from hooking up early which caused her to have a new older sibling in her new timeline and having her own name changed, much to her dismay.
  • On a lesser note, Randy and Biff are the Jerk Jock bullies of their respective films. However, unlike Biff, Randy is not the film's antagonist and merely plays a supporting role.
• Everybody Smokes: Parodied. The vast majority of adults in 1987 are smoking and clearly have zero regard for health issues, second hand smoke or that someone might object the smell.
• False Reassurance: When Jamie worries about erasing herself from existence by interfering in her parents' relationship, she's reassured that she won't end up disappearing and will eventually return to 2023… Only as someone who has no identity, no home, and with her entire life beforehand erased.
• Fan Disservice: Played for Laughs when Jamie is briefly distracted by a hunky shirtless guy at a wild teenage party... only to get extremely grossed-out upon learning that she was inadvertently ogling her father when he was a teenager.
• Final Girl: Played with throughout the film.
  • It seems as though Pam was one, especially due to her capability to defend herself when attacked by the killer in the present day, but it's later averted when Jamie goes back to 1987 and discovers her mother was never an actual target of the original killer, since she held no responsibility for Fat Trish's death. She's also revealed to be an Alpha Bitch, rather than the Token Wholesome Girl Next Door Jamie thought her to be.
  • Subverted with Jamie who does use edibles and drink alcohol but is still able to hold her own against both killers, defeating them and resetting time.
• Fire-Forged Friends: When Jamie shows up in 1987, Pam is immediately a jerk to her, and her, the Mollys, and Randy quickly begin bullying her. As the killings start, however, Pam begins to Pet the Dog more and ends up standing up for her against both the Sheriff and her friends. By the end, they're fighting the killer off together.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Our heroine, Jamie, is a 2023 girl stuck in 1987. Culture shock ensues.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: After Jamie returns home in the altered 2023, viewers can spot a gay pride flag prominently displayed that previously wasn't there, minutes before we meet our heroine Colette's older brother, this world's Jamie, and his husband Jason.
• Flat Character: Played for Drama. Apart from Pam and, to a lesser extent, Marissa, the Mollys don’t get to show any layers aside from being shallow Alpha Bitch mean girls who act as the typically clueless slasher victims killed off easily. It’s not surprising or unexpected that their self-indulgent and careless choices became their undoing with any help from Jamie gutted thanks to their constant ignorance. Jamie, by her merit, even sees their front as an annoyance with little to sympathize them for. It gets worse when Marissa reveals why the killer aka Doug targeted them upon an incident where they partially caused the death of his girlfriend Trish. After enduring their frequent bullying, Jamie is understandably seething that she spent most of her efforts trying to rescue straightforwardly selfish and unapologetic people who might not be worth supporting at all. It’s even plausible for Doug wanting to kill the Mollys as Tiffany and Heather don’t get to show any sympathetic traits with only Marissa narrowly demonstrating the capability to be selflessly honest and Pam being more fleshed out through Jamie.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the present time, when the adult Kara voices her suspicion of Jamie's father Blake being the murderer, Jamie rants at Kara and accuses her of hating her father for a long time, leaving Kara clearly seething. Going back to 1987, after Heather's murder, Blake voices his suspicion about Kara being missing during the commotion, causing the friendship between the two to end.
  • Jamie tells Lauren about the possibility that there are two killers like in Scream. As it turns out, she was right but in a slightly different way: Doug was the original killer wanting revenge for his girlfriend's drunk-driving death (that was partially caused by the Mollys, barring Pam) while Chris continued the spree in order to get more attention to his flagging podcast.
  • Jamie wonders why a serial killer would wait 35 years to kill her mother after the deaths of all her friends. Because Doug only wanted revenge on the three girls (Tiffany, Marisa, and Heather) who were indirectly responsible for his girlfriend Trish's death, while Chris killed Pam to create the illusion that the killer had come back to draw more attention to his failing podcast about the Sweet Sixteen murders.
  • Amelia tries to inform people in the present Jamie was sent back in time, but nobody believes her except Chris, who actually witnessed her time jump as it happened while he was in the midst of trying to kill her.
  • A minor case but when picking up Amelia with Jamie, Blake tries to engage Lauren in polite conversation and she is noticeably cold to him. We learn shortly after when Jamie goes back in time, that Pam and Blake were part of the bullying popular kids while Lauren was a teenage inventor with no friends, so it's no surprise she's not eager to talk with him in the present.
  • Though he's presented as an unathletic and awkward bookworm that is easily bullied by Randy, Doug is visibly quite a large guy who later discloses he has five years of martial arts training. Once we've seen both Blake and Randy fight the killer, Doug is left as the only believable suspect as he's the only named character who fits the killer's physique.
  • When going through the plan of catching the Sweet Sixteen Killer, Randy suggests the killer might slit Marissa's throat before she gets the chance to press the rape alarm although Jamie dismisses the notion as it's not their MO. Sure enough, Marissa gets ambushed behind by the copycat Killer who slashes her throat right before she sounds the rape alarm.
  • Doug Summers mentions a selling point of Death Wish 3 is the (at the time) state-of-the-art graphics of whenever someone is killed, they explode into a pink mist. No guesses as to what happens to Chris Dubasage aka the Copycat Killer when Jamie pushes him into the walls of the accelerating Quantum Drop with Jamie even lampshading the aftermath.
  • At the beginning of the film, Zattaburger employee Angie tells Chris Dubasge and his Sweet Sixteen Killer podcast tour group that there should have been "at least six people" murdered to qualify for a Serial Killer in her opinion^note In legal terms, a Serial Killer typically has to kill three or more people to be classified as one so the Sweet Sixteen Killer just barely fits the minimum criteria. Thanks to time-travelling interference, the body count in 1987 increases to six with the original three murder victims (Tiffany, Heather and Marissa) being joined by Norm Dubasage and both the original and copycat killers themselves (Doug Summers and Chris Dubasage).
  • When Jamie talks to Doug outside of Lurch's van, he says they are safe citing the police presence along with his hall monitor status and knowledge of karate. But they are actually safe because he's the killer and neither one of them is his target.
• Furniture Blockade: Blake and Pam move several dressers in front of the doors to their room in the cabin when they realize the killer is present, although they end up leaving the room anyway after a few seconds to try and help Heather.
• Future Badass: Pam is a terrified, ditzy Girl Posse member who is quickly knocked unconscious the first time she nervously confronts the killer in 1987 (although she gets braver and tougher over the next few scenes), but is a Crazy-Prepared, constantly armed martial artist by 2023.
• Gender-Blender Name: As per horror movie tradition, our female protagonist has the unisex name of Jamie which is most prominent when her time-traveling adventure causes her to have an older brother also named Jamie whom Pam names in her honor. The original Jamie is given the very feminine name of "Colette" instead, subverting the trope for her in the end.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The final body count consists of three girls and original murder victims (Tiffany, Heather and Marissa) and three guys (Norm Dubasge, Doug Summers and Chris Dubasage) discounting Pamela whom Jamie successfully saved from altering the timeline.
• Generation Xerox: Also slightly amusing is the fact that all the characters involved in the plot never moved out of town and apparently still maintain some level of friendship and communication in between 1987 and 2023.
  • Kara is the town sheriff in 2023 just like her father was in 1987.
  • Chris is a reporter in 2023 just like his father was in 1987.
  • Amelia is a Teen Genius inventor, following in her mother Lauren's ambitions just like in 1987.
  • Jamie is a disrespectful, rebellious teen girl just like her mother Pam was in 1987, as can be seen in the characters' interaction scenes with their own respective mothers.
• Girl Posse: "The Mollys" consisting of the teenage Pam and her three best friends, Tiffany, Marissa and Heather, who style themselves off Molly Ringwald.
• Hate Sink: While Doug has a sympathetic motive, wanting revenge on the Mollys for getting his girlfriend killed, Chris Dubasage does not. He's just a creepy asshole who killed Jamie's mom to further capitalize on the attention and money it brings him as a podcaster on the Sweet 16 Killer.
• Hidden Depths: Marisa is a promiscuous Asian Airhead member of a bullying Girl Posse, but she's implied to be a Token Religious Teammate (nervously crossing herself in one scene) and shows Straw Loser Lurch some gratitude over a Noodle Incident where he didn't interrupt her and her boyfriend after walking in on them having sex.
• Hidden Weapons: Since Lauren had no way to know who would survive the fight inside the Quantum Drop for the next 35 years, she decided to pack a gun in an ankle holster when examining the amusement park, just in case of anyone else than Jamie getting out of the ride.
• Homemade Inventions: Each itteration of the Time Machine is made by jury-rigging home appliances and copious amounts of random electronics.
• Immune to Drugs: Jamie's experience eating modern, high-potency edibles has made her virtually immune to the pot brownies of the 1980s, containing marijuana of significantly lower strength.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Even with Doug getting killed, Marisa still dies because Chris returned to the past with Amelia's time machine.
  • Even though Jaime was unable to prevent her parents from hooking up in high school instead of after college like in the original timeline, they still got married and remained as such. Jamie is also pretty much the same as before, aside from now having an older brother and a new name.
• Intrepid Reporter: Chris's dad is a celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist whose first scene in 2023 shows him reporting a hurricane without even bothering to wear a coat with a hood, even though he's in his seventies at the time. Constantly being unfavorably compared to his dad has done a lot to warp Chris.
• In-Series Nickname: Pamela was called Pam back in her teenaged years which is used to distinguish between her 1987 and 2023 self on the page.
• Irony: Chris's motivation for the copycat killings is to reignite interest in the Sweet Sixteen Killer and boost the ratings of his podcast centered around the incident. In the new timeline, the Sweet Sixteen Massacre was a far more dramatic event with more victims - but that timeline's Chris has no interest in the case or true crime at all, since one of the victims was his own father.
• It Runs in the Family: Both Lauren and Amelia are a case of Teen Geniuses, each building a working Time Machine all on their own while still in high school.
• Jaded Washout: Played for Drama. Lauren is stuck doing dead-end job (implied to be working factory shifts), despite being a genuinely brilliant inventor in her youth. Now she's a very bitter, cynical person due to how her life turned out to be. Thanks to teenage Lauren interacting with Jamie and thus getting validation that her inventions actually do work, things play out differently for her. When Jamie returns back to 2023, Lauren is doing far better for herself, being an engineer and much more content with her life.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: A unique case as Doug originally got away with the murders and eventually became school principal. However, that Doug is erased from existence when Jamie goes back in time and helps her parents kill him as a teenager. So effectively, his original Karma Houdini never happened.
• Last-Second Word Swap: On two occasions, Jamie almost calls the teenage Pam "Mom" before hastily switching to "Mamacita".
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: The members of the Mollys, but Pam is given specific attention regarding her Hidden Depths.
• Ludicrous Gibs: After hooking up the time machine to the Quantum Drop, teenage Lauren warns Jamie to stay at the center while the ride is in motion otherwise the centrifugal force would turn her into a fine paste at full velocity. Chris ultimately meets his fate this way when Jamie pushes him and is "thrown against the wall with the same force as a rocket", instantly exploding and killing him.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The Sweet Sixteen Killer hides his identity using a Max Headroom-esque type rubber mask with a pierced right ear akin to Billy Idol, making him all the more menacing and as eighties as you can get on his massacre spree.
• Mandela Effect: Word-for-word referenced in-universe as the reason why some characters have a Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. As it turns out, all of those instances of people remembering things that never happened are a result of someone altering pre-existing events via time travel.
• Meaningful Name: Pamela means "honey" or "all sweetness" which is very fitting for a wholesomely good, overly protective mother like herself. However, her character was an entirely different story back in 1987.
• Meaningful Rename: Twice due to time-travel intervention:
  • Eddie Royal changes the name of his band from "Killer Instinkt" to "A Waterbed Away", reflecting how he was this close to being murdered on the waterbed like Tiffany was when hooking up with her as well as the Genre Shift from rock to emo.
  • Jamie is now called "Colette" in the new timeline, since she now has an older brother whom her mother decided to name in her honor.
• Meanwhile, in the Future…: As San Dimas Time is in place, Amelia and Chris lead the B-plot in 2023 with the former building a second time machine to go after Jamie while alterations to the timeline are simultaneously happening through the latter's photos.
• Mistaken for Gay: Played for laughs. Due to her awkward behaviour and even weirder attachment to teenage Pam, eventually other 80s teens start to think Jamie is a lesbian.
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence: When Jaime time-travels to 1987, the once desolated amusement park is now bustling and packed with people while "Venus" by Bananarama plays over the speakers.
• Murder by Inaction: The original Sweet Sixteen Killer's motive is this. The Mollys (save for Pam, who wasn't on speaking terms with Tiffany during the incident) let Fat Trish drive home drunk, resulting in a fatal car crash. Jamie, for her part, is horrified and disgusted by the Mollys for this.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: While pursuing Jamie and teenage Lauren, Chris kills his dad on live television thinking he would not have to deal with a neglectful, career-focused father anymore in the new timeline. He could not have been more wrong as this only traumatized his teenage self into taking a completely different route in life, ensuring he never made his Sweet Sixteen murders podcast in the first place and kill Pamela in his obsession to become famous (as well as killing Amelia when she finished the second time machine). Thus, he ends up both dying in the old timeline and living in the new timeline in complete obscurity which is the last thing his former self would ever want, while sparing his two present-day victims.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Only evident in retrospect, but in her desparation to get into the party and stop the killer from getting The Mollys, Jamie ended up helping him get inside, leading to the death of Tiffany.
• Non-Protagonist Resolver: Downplayed as Kara (The Stoner and a Red Herring in 1987 and prime example of Police Are Useless in the 2023 scenes) is the one to kill the Sweet Sixteen Killer after he overpowers all of the protagonists when they try to trap him. However, shortly afterward, it turns out some of the killings were caused by a Jack the Ripoff who becomes the final boss and sends Kara fleeing for her life.
• Nostalgia Ain't Like It Used to Be: A big source of the comedy is the copious amounts of Deliberate Values Dissonance that Jamie encounters in the 1980s. Despite our initial vision of the decade being brightly colored fashions and chipper synth music, society of the era is not soft or innocent. Instead, it's repeatedly shown to be bigoted, crass, and reckless. In an amusing contrast to Back to the Future (1985), people in the past find the time traveler to be lame and annoying for their future perspective rather than super-cool.
• Now I Know What to Name Him: Pam honors Jamie for saving her life from the Sweet Sixteen Killer by naming her firstborn after her future daughter. However, in a twist for this trope, Jamie wasn't the one named that but her newly-gained older brother and instead goes by "Colette" in the altered timeline.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Jamie had a mild one when she accidentally blurted out to high-schooler Pam (her mother) that the latter and Blake (her father) should be together. Early in the movie the adult Blake specifically pointed out that he was glad he and Pam only hooked up during college and not in high school, because the relationship would not have lasted. Worried of such a consequence which means she would either disappear or no one would recognize her when she returns to the future, in the second act of the movie Jamie briefly discourages her parents from being together so early on, but ends up putting greater focus on finding the serial killer. When she returns to her new timeline, Jamie still has her parents, albeit with the addition of a new older brother whom she doesn't recognize and she now has a new name Colette.
• One Note Chef: Chris Dubsage is a Trashy True Crime podcaster with a decent fanbase but he only ever talks about one thing, The Sweet Sixteen Killer murders, and is expectedly obsessed with being the number one expert on the topic. This is deconstructed as his overly-specialised podcast is incredibly hard to sustain a regular audience with only three murders that were committed all the way back in 1987, nearly four decades ago, due to Chris' inability to let go of the past and always being in his successful father's shadow. His obsession is to the point that his brilliant idea of furthering his career and gaining fame is continuing the Sweet Sixteen Killer legacy by murdering Pamela so he would have more to talk about in his newly-revitalized podcast instead of the more sensible solution of expanding to other cases like a non-delusionally insane person.
• Only a Flesh Wound:
  • Teenage Blake gets stabbed by the original killer when fighting him off in the cabin. The only result is spending rest of the film with his arm in a sling, but that's about it.
  • Pam ends up stabbed by the copy-cat killer in the torso, but survives that no worse for wear.
• Open-Minded Parent: In the revised timeline, Pam and Blake seem to be completely accepting of their adult son being gay and raising a daughter with his husband.
• Our Time Machine Is Different: There is a total of three unusual time machines over the course of the movie:
  • The original prototype was made from a photo booth that Amelia couldn't get to work until the Sweet Sixteen Killer stabbed the control panel and sent Jamie back to 1987.
  • The next was a racing car arcade machine Amelia had quickly improvised to go after Jamie.
  • Finally, her teenage mother Lauren would hook the time machine component to the Quantum Drop, a Gravitron-esque amusement park ride, so Jamie can return to 2023.
• Paradox Person: Discussed. When Jamie asks Lauren if changing how her parents got together will erase her from existence, Lauren brushes it off saying that probably won't happen like it did in Back to the Future and Jamie will just end up in a timeline very different from the one she remembers. When the original Sweet Sixteen Killer is posthumously unmasked as Doug only for the 2023 one to show up, Jamie assumes it's the present Doug who still exists despite his past self's death. It's subverted when the 2023 killer is revealed to be Chris.
• Parental Neglect: Chris's father, Noah, is too busy with his successful career as a reporter to pay any attention to him, causing an untold amount of resentment in Chris who went on the dark path of becoming a Serial Killer in hopes of acquiring the same fame as Noah with his one-note Trashy True Crime podcast.
• Parting-Words Regret: Jamie reacts to her mother's "I love you" with exasperation and doesn't bother to respond or look back before leaving for the Killer Instinkt's concert. Unfortunately, that was the last time she saw her mother alive before the Sweet Sixteen Killer stabbed her to death and Jamie definitely did not take this well. In the new timeline where her mother is still alive, Jamie tearfully embraces her and wishes her the "I love you" she never got the chance to say before.
• Patricide: Chris, as the Sweet Sixteen killer, murders his own father on live TV when he travels back to 1987. Ironically, this event was traumatic enough for the new timeline's Chris to pull a Heel–Faith Turn and become a monk. Although Lauren claims to still keep tabs on him just in case.
• Person as Verb: In the Creative Closing Credits, Kara's pot brownies are given the rating of "Snoop Dogg".
• Plot-Triggering Death: The gruesome murder of Jamie's mother Pamela at the hands of the Sweet Sixteen Killer led her best friend Amelia to build a Time Machine for the Science Fair and set the date to 27th October 1987, the day the first of the original three murders occurred, in hopes of stopping the killer before their murder spree began and therefore save Pamela from her demise.
• Point of Divergence: As Lauren tells Jamie, the timeline can be changed to the point where significant details are radically altered with most people in both the past and present none the wiser. Lauren's daughter Amelia even refers to the "Mandela Effect"invoked when describing this to some extent. Some examples:
  • Tiffany is killed in her parents' room rather than the garage after Jamie accidentally gives Tiffany the idea to make out with Eddie by mentioning the popularity of his future music.
  • Where in the original timeline Marisa was the second victim, Heather replaces her instead in the new timeline.
  • Marisa becomes the last of the girls to die, albeit after the original killer has been taken out and after the new killer comes into the picture.
  • Doug is finally revealed to be the killer and is impaled by Kara, resulting in his present counterpart disappearing altogether. Because of this, Randy is Vernon High's principal in 2023.
  • Chris in the new timeline has moved to India and is training to become a monk, having been traumatized by the sight of the Sweet Sixteen Killer (actually his future self) murdering his father on live TV. That being said, Lauren does still keep tabs on him in order to make absolutely sure that he isn't up to anything sketchy.
  • When Jamie returns to the present, several things about her life are changed: her parents instantly hooked up after she left, resulting in Jamie having an older brother (and brother-in-law and niece) and Jamie herself having the name "Colette" as her brother has the name "Jamie" instead of her in the new altered timeline.
  • On a lighter note, Eddie's band "Killer Instinkt" is now changed to "A Waterbed Away" because he was "a waterbed away" from death when Tiffany was killed.
• Police Are Useless: Jamie criticizes Kara's lack of diligent police work after her mother is killed. As Jamie learns by going back to 1987, it turns out her father wasn't much better at his job as town sheriff.
• Politically Correct History: The heaps of Deliberate Values Dissonance and the school's racially offensive school mascot that Jamie finds in 1987 make the complete lack of racial stereotyping displayed between characters in 1987 all the more apparent. Social circles in Vernon are completely colorblind, and no one ever remarks upon any other character's race.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Downplayed. When Jamie tries to explain the situation to Sheriff Lim, she invokes Back to the Future (1985). The sheriff is aware of its existence and the broad idea of what it's about, but he didn't manage to see it yet, and thus ends up being progressively more confused by Jamie's attempt to explain the situation. Eventually, they just take her for a kid obsessing over a blockbuster.
• Pummeling the Corpse: After Adult-Chris had already killed Marisa and her body was lying on the floor, while chasing the others he later takes the time to stab her body more because he only slit her throat rather than the original killer's usual 16 stabs.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Jamie tends to do this, alongside clapping her hands on every syllable, to make her point.
  Jamie: [Breaking up Teenaged Pam and Blake's make-out session] Hey! Too. Horny. Too. Soon.
• Red Herring:
  • The camera lingers in Lurch acting creepy when characters pass him by, and he has a notebook of creepy scrawled text, but he's not the killer.
  • While flirting with Pam, Blake is shown making a drawing using sketchy black lines that look similar to the way the threatening note for Pam is written, but he's not the killer.
• Reformed Bully:
  • Pam and Blake were awful in high school, but seem to be genuinely nice, normal people in the present. It's implied the killing spree and its aftermath forced them both to grow up a lot.
  • Randy was also a Jerk Jock who became the gym teacher and is not shown to be malicious. He becomes the principal in the new timeline.
  • Averted with Kara who's a jerk in the past and present. Though she does save the group from Sweet Sixteen killer and in the new timeline she's said to be less miserable.
• Retired Monster: Doug was never caught or found out in the original timeline. He went on to become the principal of Jamie's high school, not continuing his killing spree, implying he was content with his revenge.
• Rewatch Bonus: Notice during the second act of the movie, the Sweet Sixteen killer was bent on his target Heather and seemed slightly reluctant attacking the others, even though he ultimately have no qualms killing them if it would ensure his own getaway. That's because he doesn't kill indiscriminately - his motivation is revenge against the Mollys responsible for the death of his girlfriend, and the rest were nuisances getting in his way.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Jamie tells the teenage Pam that being on the Quantum Drop ride is an important event in her future, but leaves out that was when Pam found out she was pregnant with Jamie. Pam later saves Jamie from the copycat killer when they're in the Quantum Drop, having figured out that the ride was linked to Jamie.
• Run or Die: An adult Coach Randy's self-defense training seemingly consists solely of telling the kids to run the other way whenever they see a knife-carrying killer.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Jamie's main motivation is stopping the Sweet Sixteen Killer and thus preventing him from murdering her mother and, once back in 1987, trying to prevent the killing spree entirely. While she ultimately fails to do that and the original killing spree gets the three girls killed anyway, she does prevent her mother's death and, completely by accident, also gives Lauren a push to pursue her engineering dreams, leaving her better off than in the original timeline.
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: How Teenaged Blake was first introduced by emerging from Tiffany's pool, shirtless with slick back wet hair whom Jamie initially ogled at until realising he's her father. Helps that he is played by Charlie Gillespie of Julie and the Phantoms fame.
• Shout-Out:
  • Jamie is named after famous horror movie icon Jamie Lee Curtis.
  • Jamie's parents, Pamela and Blake, decided to go as Claire Standish and shirtless Zac Efron for Halloween respectively. Post time-travel has them dressed up in the more couple-coordinated costumes of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
  • There are a few references to The Breakfast Club with the Hughes residence and Vernon High School being nods to John Hughes who directed the film and Richard Vernon who was the principal in the film respectively. It also stars Molly Ringwald, Pam's favorite actress and whom the Mollys styled their fashion-sense from.
  • Jamie references Back to the Future (1985) when describing her time-traveling situation to the cops. Since the movie only came out two years ago in 1987, the cops laugh it off as her being obsessed with the film.
  • While posing as a Foreign Exchange Student, Jamie uses the surname of LaFleur which was Sawyer's pseudonym last name in Lost when he went back in time to live among the Dharma Initiative.
  • Lauren asks Jamie how much she knows about quantum mechanics. Jamie says she saw Avengers: Endgame, but she didn't understand it.
  • Jamie, Pam, and Lauren watch RoboCop (1987) on VHS at one point in Pam's basement. There are other tapes piled around the TV which include Dune (1984), The Terminator, Re-Animator, Blade Runner, Buckaroo Banzai, The Empire Strikes Back, TRON, Innerspace, The Last Starfighter and Scanners.
  • Jamie theorizes to a teenage Lauren that there are two Sweet Sixteen Killers, referencing Scream. As the film was released in 1996, Lauren doesn't understand the reference.
  • The Sweet Sixteen Killer's ensemble, particularly the rubber mask, brings to mind Michael Myers. The fact that his victims are teenage girls who were stabbed to death is reminiscent of Michael's murder of his sister Judith. Chris, when giving a Motive Rant about immortalizing the Sweet Sixteen Killer, directly name-drops Myers.
  • The rubber mask is in the likeness of Max Headroom minus the sunglasses with a dangling right cross earring similarly worn by Billy Idol.
  • The Mollys, a quartet of 80s-era fashionably-coordinated Alpha Bitches all collectively referred to by one name with one member being notably uncomfortable with their worst shenanigans, are clearly inspired by the Heathers (with one of them even being named Heather). In the new timeline, the Sole Survivor of the Mollys has a son who marries a man named Jason and has a daughter named Veronica, the names of the two central characters of Heathers.
  • Jamie gets her own version of the famous "Horror Movie Rules" scene from Scream (1996), when she tries to prevent the teenagers from getting themselves killed. Just like Randy in Scream, she lays out that in order to survive a horror movie, you can't drink or have sex or go anywhere alone... and, just like Randy, she gets booed by the others. As a bonus, Randy's actor is Jamie Kennedy.
• Signature Headgear: Heather has a mini top hat pinned to her hair and wears it for all her outfits, even for gym class.
• Skewed Priorities: After the killer is killed and unmasked, Randy was more bothered that Doug "Dork" Summers hopelessly beat him in a fight than anything else.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The joyful "Let the Music Play" by Shannon plays in the background as Heather is stabbed to death.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Jamie is consistently shocked at how authority figures in 1987, from school staff to jaded carnival ride operators, just do what she asks of them without even caring to verify her story.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Doug, the original killer wanted revenge on the Mollys for getting his girlfriend Trish killed.
• Sinister Scythe: Kara dresses up as the Grim Reaper for Halloween 1987 complete with a menacing scythe which contributes to the group's wariness of her. It later turns out that the scythe was real and very sharp when Kara impales the Sweet Sixteen Killer clean through.
• Take That!: The "original" 2023 version of Chris Dubusage is an extremely unflattering take on true crime podcasts, with him being shown to have been so lazy and immature that he was more willing to become a Serial Killer and go on a brutal murder spree rather than simply change up the topic of discussion for his podcast.
• Technology Marches On: In-Universe. Jamie's attempt to get the police to DNA profile the killer's blood sample is shot down because one part Police Are Useless (they seem to not know what DNA is) and one part DNA profiling being in its relative infancy in 1987, and thus most authorities wouldn't have even heard of such technology, let alone be able to use it (the American CODIS database was not implemented until a decade after the film's setting in the past).
• Teenage Pregnancy: Since Jamie's advice of getting together after college has fallen on deaf ears, teenaged Pam and Blake almost immediately hooked up in high school once she left for 2023 and conceived her thirty-four-year-old brother also named Jamie as a result.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: As the 1987 Sheriff pointed it out himself, time travel movies never made sense. Little to no explanation for the presence of the physical machines that can transport people through time. Does it need to exist at that time period that the time traveler is going to? Besides, if the time traveler is the only one physically unaffected by the changes in the timeline, what about Jamie's new timeline counterpart apparently being completely replaced by the Jamie of the original timeline? Due to the rule that the time traveller physically replaces themselves? Doesn't explain Chris Dubusage time-travelling to a past when his younger counterpart exists, and even after his death, his new timeline counterpart still exists...
• Took a Level in Kindness: Teenaged Pam used to be part of the popular girls clique in school until the traumatic deaths of all her friends at the hands of the Sweet Sixteen Killer did a 180 to her personality and became a dotingly wholesome albeit overprotective mother to Jamie in the present. Thanks to her future daughter's influence and finding out the reason her best friends were targeted, Pam grew up to be an even better person by making amends with her own mother and fixing their estranged relationship as shown with Grandma often visiting in the new timeline.
• Toxic Friend Influence: It's implied that Tiffany, Marissa and Heather were ones to Pam since she was a Grade-A shallow Alpha Bitch around their company but showed signs of empathy when not enabled to be her worst self such as being appalled at them for letting Trish drive drunk which caused her death during her and Tiffany’s fall out. Needless to say, Pamela became a much better person once her posse was all offed by the Sweet Sixteen Killer and she had time to reflect.
• Tragic Keepsake: The cream leather fringe jacket Jamie borrowed from her mother for the Killer Instinkt concert that night became the last remnant before her untimely demise.
• Trashy True Crime: Chris Dubusage runs a podcast about the Sweet Sixteen Killer. As Blake personally knew the victims, he finds it to be in poor taste. Chris is revealed to have murdered Pam in 2023, hoping to immortalize the Sweet Sixteen Killer and become famous as the person most knowledgeable about them.
• Un-person: According to Lauren, this is what will happen to Jamie if her parents end up never getting together because of her unintentional interference. She won't be physically wiped from existence but all records and memories of her existence will be.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Chris grows up to be a Hate Sink Serial Killer who hates his dad and kills people to get famous, but his 1987 scenes all show him as a seemingly polite nerd who is proud of his dad and upset about the murders that he later decides to exploit and continue.
• What You Are in the Dark: After Doug is revealed as the killer and lies dead before the survivors, everyone wonders what his motive was, and Marisa confesses that Doug's girlfriend died as a result of a particularly nasty and potentially criminal bit of bullying she was involved in, even though no one would know or guess the truth if she stayed quiet. That being said, she's quick to blame Tiffany as the main culprit in what happened.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Segments of Lauren's notebook to Jamie are shown during the credits, telling what happened with all the surviving characters in the new timeline in a Catching Up on History montage for Jamie and the audience.
  • Pam and Blake hooked up way sooner in high school rather than after college, which resulted in Jamie having an older brother who took her old name and she is renamed "Colette" in return. Older brother Jamie is married to his husband Jason and has a three-year-old daughter named Veronica.
  • Lauren is a lot happier as a bio-engineer than working graveyard shifts in manufacturing while Amelia is still a genius and best friends with Jaime.
  • Randy becomes Vernon High's principal instead of the gym coach due to 2023 Doug being erased from existence.
  • Lurch founded a video game empire called "Pink Mist Games" and started an anti-bullying organization in honor of his sister Trish.
  • Kara becomes a well-respected police chief, with her brownies being the talk of the police station.
  • Following the traumatizing death of his father on live television, Chris went to a monastery in India to become a monk with Lauren keeping tabs on him.
• Who Murdered the Asshole?: Pam's attempt to narrow down who specifically the Mollys wronged badly enough to potentially trigger their murders results in her throwing out a long list of nearly every kid in school.
• Write Back to the Future: Jamie uses the fact that crime scene photos will be taken for Tiffany's murder to make a note near her corpse reading "Stab the machine - J", vague enough for the general public to mistake it as a music lyric with a "demonic rune" but specific instructions for Amelia who immediately understand she needs an additional metal conductor in order for her new Time Machine to work.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The film opens in the present day, which is explicitly the year 2023, and the original killings are said to be 35 years prior to the month. Except it's 1987 which would be 36 years.
• You Can't Fight Fate: In spite of Jaime's attempt to prevent the Sweet Sixteen killings, the three original murders would have happened no matter what. The only things Jamie had changed were the locations where their murders took place and the order they had died in. Fixed points are total bitches.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Copycat Sweet Sixteen Killer waits until Amelia finishes her second time machine before seemingly murdering her, wanting to go back into the past to add more bodies to make his podcast more famous. Regardless of whether or not Amelia died, the damage is ironically undone by the killer's own actions.