The marketing of Halina Reijn’s second film deliberately pokes at the hornets’ nest of Gen Z representation. Billed as a ‘biting’ or ‘searing’ satire of a permanently online generation, the campaign for Bodies Bodies Bodies also places a heavy focus on buzzwords; ‘gaslighting’, ‘trigger’, ‘toxic’, and ‘silencing’ are all mentioned in quick succession in one trailer, while a tagline states that ‘this is not a safe space.’

The plot is simple: a group of childhood friends organise a ‘hurricane party’ at one member’s family mansion, isolated deep in the woods. After playing a murder mystery game that brings out the worst in everyone, and imbuing copious amounts of drugs, people start actually dying and the latent paranoia that characterises most of their relationships is brought out. Focusing on the more recognisable stereotypes of a generation navigating online spaces in a way that no other generation has experienced before is a solid marketing campaign—designed, in no small way, to bring some ‘cringe’ viewings as well as its target audience. There’s no doubt that Bodies achieves what it sets out to—the characters are, to a man, varying shades of self-obsessed and narcissistic—but a more interesting, albeit subtle critique is at play.

By their nature, murder mystery films are often focused on class. A murder going unnoticed by a myriad of likely suspects could never plausibly take place in a semi-detached house. Films like Gosford Park or Knives Out draw their conflicts from the divisions that arise between the staff and the family of the house—they have always lurked, always unspoken, but it is in the aftermath of tragedy that they remerge in disorientating sharpness.

Bodies is no different—the fractures that emerge following the first death are not only based on fear, but also mistrust of those on the fringes of the group. These two characters, Bee (Maria Bakalova), the timid girlfriend of Sophie (Amandla Stenberg), and Greg (Lee Pace), are the only ones whose motives are questioned—they are subsequently the newest additions, and the only ones who come from a vastly different social class that the rest.

Bakalova plays Bee with a wide-eyed innocence. After steadying herself in the car privately, she appears in the back garden clutching a tupperware of homemade zucchini bread, her contribution to the party that garners little more than indifference. It is from her perspective that audience sees the house—the camera follows her as she moves through the vast rooms, and up winding staircases, unable to get an understanding of the space in which she is moving, only adding to the tension that ratchets up once the lights go out and the bodies start dropping. She consistently gets lost—and is the first person to find David dying, purely because she got confused over which staircase to go down.

The rest of the group treat her with initial curiosity, asking where she works and what country she is from. Bee is unable to correct them when they assume she is from Russia, because after she states that she currently works at Game Hut, they appear to have moved on from her as a subject worthy of discussion. Instead, this passing disinterest is deceptive—Jordan (Myha’la Herrold), who harbours feelings for Sophie, reveals later on in the film that she has looked into Bee’s background. It is a ‘gotcha’ moment turned deadly: while everyone’s suspicions are raised, and weapons are being welded, she reveals that no one with that name graduated from Bee’s supposed university. That, combined with Bee’s admission that she has actually been unemployed for the whole time that Sophie has known her, is enough to reinforce the suspicions of the group of Bee’s motives. Greg, another unknown, quickly becomes a threat due to his supposed military service, a map of their location in his bag, and the fact that Alice—his newly acquired girlfriend—has failed to find out how much money he earns.

There is no denying that the characters of Bodies live in a bubble—but the extent to which their social circle is defined by money and class is gradually revealed by their inability to either comprehend different experiences of wealth, or to truly understand that their lives have been defined by an extremely privileged set of circumstances. When the house in which they have holed up for their hurricane party is commented on by Bee, who looks around it in unmistakable awe, as ‘very impressive’—an adjective she uses several times in the opening minutes of the film—one character dismisses it. ‘Sophie’s parents have [a house] that’s even bigger,’ she states, highlighting the divides even within this upper-class circle.

An recent study by London School of Economics found a tendency for middle class British people to describe themselves as working class, a phenomenon brought about in part by ‘misidentifications… built on particular origin stories’. While Bodies Bodies Bodies takes place in the USA, these attitudes prevail. During one climactic argument, in which long-dormant resentments are dragged to the surface, Jordan is accused of being ‘so in love with [her] rags to riches story’ that in reality is little more than a story: her parents are ‘upper middle class’ and teach at a university. Herrold captures the shattering of this delusion perfectly, eyes impressively blank but voice cracking ever so slightly as she spits back the ultimate rejoinder: ‘It’s. Public.’ Her sense of self, of what defines her in opposition to the rest of the group, is pulled apart. No wonder she shoots Alice mere moments later.

Like so many murder mystery films before it, Bodies Bodies Bodies digs into society through the lens of the genre. Knives Out delved into the perception and attitude towards immigrant workers in Trump’s America, Gosford Park looked at the landed gentry and abuses of power in inter-war Britain. But by taking aim at a generation seen as more liberal than their millennial predecessors, Reijn and screenwriter Kristen Roupenian unpick the knotty issues of class that so easily tear apart this group of self-obsessed, self-possessed Gen Z narcissists.