A teenager (Kiernan Shipka) travels back in time to 1987 to stop a serial killer from terrorising big-haired high school girls, in this 2023 horror/comedy they should have called Terminator 2: Judgment Spray.

This is Amazon’s attempt at replicating the high-concept sci-fi/slasher formula made lucrative by Christopher Landon, who basically took time-loop (Happy Death Day) and body-swap (Freaky) comedies and added some stabbings. Totally Killer sees Jason Blum, who produced both movies, try to do the same but with time travel.

This sounds like a good idea on paper; what better way to send up ’80s slasher flicks than have a modern character travel back to 1987, mine the culture clash for comedy, and throw in a bunch of old-school horror references? Unfortunately none of that occurs to any of the film’s three writers, who systematically pass up every opportunity for jokes about fashion, Reagan or Satanic Panic, but do muster one zinger about people in the ’80s not knowing what DNA is.

The film’s main reference point is Back to the Future, which is notably not a horror movie, but could still be parodied with gags about families remaining in the same town for generations (as they do here). But Totally Killer has no parody or horror elements, and fails even the most basic provision of mindless ’80s nostalgia.

Shipka (Mad Men‘s Sally Draper) does a decent job as the time-travelling teen, but has nothing to do except walk around humourlessly policing her new friends’ behaviour. This would be easier to swallow if the film’s own social attitudes had advanced since the 1980s, but aside from making a pair of black characters good at science, the only sign of progress is how convenient streaming technology has made it for us to utterly waste 100 minutes of our lives.