“Time travel! … What? I see this as an absolute win.” – Bruce Banner, Avengers: Endgame.

Time travel movies are crazy. And they all have rules that change. Back to the Future. Avengers Endgame. LOST. 12 Monkeys. Dozens more.

You can add another time travel movie to the list with the film Totally Killer, which is available on Prime. And it is a total hoot.

This was a really fun and inventive movie with a lot of humor and creativity. Does the time travel rules get broken? Oh yeah. Are there a few weird plot points that do not make sense? Sure. Did they leave a dangling plot or two? Yes. But I had an absolute blast watching it and was totally engaged all the way through.

According to IMDB, “When the infamous ‘Sweet Sixteen Killer’ returns 35 years after his first murder spree to claim another victim, 17-year-old Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) accidentally travels back in time to 1987, determined to stop the killer before he can start.“

Kiernan Shipka was great as out protagonist who was desperately running around in the past trying to use the information that she knew in order to prevent the three killings and to change the future that she left.

The film wisely alluded to several of the time travel movies, comparing what was going on to the situation they were in. Every time Jamie made an allusion to a movie, she was like the audience, who must have been thinking the same thing.

The final showdown with the killer was not the best moment of the film, but it did not detract from the overall enjoyment of the film. I have said this before, but when a film is funny, it gets extra grace when dealing with storyline. This movie was funny.

Some of the best jokes were about the 1980s and how people kept doing things that she thought, in her 2023 mindset, was just crazy or dangerous. There was a scene with the red rubber dodgeballs that I literally screamed out about. Our generation knew what it was like to be hit in the face with those red dodgeballs and get past it. That does not happen in today’s schools.

This film knows that it is silly and slight, and it plays into it big time. By doing so, they have given us a spectacularly good time in a film that is like Back to the Future combined with Scream combined with Happy Death Day. I loved this.

4.5 stars