[Nerdspresso] ‘Totally Killer’ Takes Slasher Fun Back to the ’80s

By Jeff Stanford, Special to Southpoint Access

Time travel movies are tricky. They can be twisty and brilliant, like “12 Monkeys” and “Looper,” or silly and fun, like “Back to the Future” and “Hot Tub Time Machine.” Others, like “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Time After Time,” use time travel as a plot device with no logical reasoning. But all entries in this genre mess with your head a little bit, which is what makes them so captivating.

“I hate time travel movies. They never make any sense,” says a character in “Totally Killer,” the funny, time-hopping slasher flick from 2023 that you can now find on Prime Video.

He’s not wrong. Even good ones, like “Avengers: Endgame,” set up rules that they fudge whenever it’s convenient for story purposes.

You could get lost trying to connect A to B to Z with these flicks, but at some point, you just need to silence your internal Neil deGrasse Tyson and have a good time.

That’s how I’m feeling about “Totally Killer.” This flick is a clever mix of slasher and time travel tropes slathered with a thin layer of ’80s nostalgia. If “Scream” met “Back to the Future” at a party with “Heathers” and “The Wedding Singer,” “Totally Killer” would be there doing a keg stand.