The actress travels back in time and battles a killer in a new film, out Friday on Prime Video
Kiernan Shipka is decades ahead of her time in a new horror-comedy Totally killer.
The Crazy people alum, 23, plays Jamie Hughes, a teenager who meets the so-called “Sweet Sixteen Killer” on Halloween night, 35 years after he took the lives of three teenagers who were all friends of Jamie’s mom Pam (Modern familyJulie Bowen).
On the run, she accidentally travels to 1987, the year a masked assassin killed the trio. Jamie joins forces with his then-teenage mother (Olivia Holt) to stop the murders before they happen.
Just a few problems: How does she explain that she’s from the future and knows about the murders before they happen?
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In a clip from the film shared exclusively with PEOPLE, Jamie goes to the police after taking a sample of the killer’s DNA — but, since it’s the 1980s, the cops don’t know what DNA is.
“Here you go, Sheriff. Careful,” Jamie says, handing the cop, played by Randall Park, a plastic bag with a blood-soaked paper towel.
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Randall Park in ‘Totally Killer’.
James Dittiger/Courtesy of Prime Video
“What is this?” he asks.
“I hit the killer on the head with a stick and with that paper towel I soaked up some of his blood. You have his DNA.”
“What is that?” another officer asks.
“DNA? It’s like – I don’t know what that means. Everyone… it’s, like, person specific. Just plug it into the world database,” explains Jamie.
The officers laughed as Sheriff Lim dismissed her, saying, “Of course honey. We’re just going to start the old world DMA database.”
In the film’s production notes, director Nahnatchka Khan (Always be my maybe) called Totally killer “Back to futurebut with the edge of a serial killer.”
“To go back in time and do some of those ’80s-style murders, I thought it was so smart and clever,” she continued. “And I wanted to bring in the true crime craze that’s going on, where people would dedicate podcasts to the Sweet Sixteen Killer and crime timelines.”
Jason Blum, producer, founder and CEO of Blumhouse, the production company behind it Totally killerhe added that fans of the 1980s have a lot to love.
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Olivia Holt, Charlie Gillespie, Kiernan Shipka, Stephi Chin-Salvo and Jeremy Monn-Djasngar in ‘Totally Killer’.
James Dittiger/Courtesy of Prime Video
“There are Easter eggs from the 80s like the fashion and the music in the film for people like me who lived through those years, but also for the generation that saw John Hughes movies and movies like heathers, Nightmare on Elm Street and Back to future or watched them with their parents,” he said.
Shipka promised that viewers would be entertained, calling it “a popcorn candy movie where you want to be attached and attached to these characters.”
Totally killer is on Prime Video on Friday.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education