'Totally Killer' Features Chilling Filming Locations and '80s-Inspired Sets
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Scary movie season participants, prepare to expand to your watchlist: Totally Killer just dropped on Prime Video. The horror-comedy is part Halloween flick, part true crime tale, and part time travel fantasy—and it’s riddled with filming locations and set design details that hark back to the ‘80s. The film follows 17-year-old Jamie (played by Kiernan Shipka) who encounters the infamous Sweet Sixteen Killer on Halloween night. While running from the maniac, who murdered three teens 35 years prior, Jamie accidentally time travels back to 1987 and sets out to stop the original killings. Ahead, take a look at what we know about where the movie was filmed and the design elements you shouldn’t miss.
Where Was Totally Killer Filmed?
The movie was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, and features everything from a nice family home to an isolated cabin in the woods. “For the '80s house party, we really wanted that sort of classic-looking house that you've seen in all the John Hughes movies," director Nahnatchka Khan said in a press brief. "This lovely couple let us shoot in their bedroom, where we rigged up the whole waterbed kill."
Finding the isolated cabin, where the teen girls stay, proved to be a challenge. Production designer Liz Kay actually stumbled upon the Canadian location while skiing on an off day. “As I'm riding up the chairlift, I look down and see a cabin and then ski down to check it out,” Kay said in the brief. “That was the cabin.”
"We had to put on the right shoes and gear to even get in,” cinematographer Judd Overton added in the brief. “It felt like the best location for the story, a haunted cabin in the wilderness, but practically it was not the best because it's very small.”
How Does Totally Killer Hone in on 1987?
Totally Killer takes a subdued approach to the ‘80s. "It's not that jokey version of the eighties that we've seen in so many movies and shows,” Khan said. “I didn't want that to be the joke.”
The director explained: "You have a Gen Z-er in this world, that's what's funny, you know? It's not like 'Look at the crazy hair.' We really wanted to take a subtle approach with that and make it feel like these people live here."
The design team stuck to a very specific color palette to ensure the world didn’t feel gimmicky. "[Costume designer Patti Henderson] and I decided we'd keep everything in the future or present day in cooler tones and everything set in the eighties was warmer tones,” Kay said.
What Design Details Should You Look Out For?
While the production couldn’t get access to an actual carnival amusement park, they were able to borrow equipment from Canadian carnies to bring one to life in a parking lot. Most notably, the team dissected and reassembled a vintage photo booth and shot on a working Gravitron ride that’s portrayed as The Quantum Drop in the film. Kay found the vintage photo booth online and had it shipped to Canada. "I wanted an original one because I wanted some of the real parts, where the pictures come out on the side,” Kay said. “They're too hard to fabricate, so it's better to have the bones of an old one and adapt it."
Another crucial design moment was the waterbed sequence. Kay and her team built and designed the waterbed, which is basically a bed with a water topper. “You could fill a real waterbed up really, really well, but you couldn't do retakes," Kay said.
"We put a lot of time into the design of that scene and having spouts of water coming out as the killer stabs and misses the girl," Overton added. "It really plays into those sort of cheesy teen moods, with the girl dolling herself up, oblivious to the danger."
You love filming locations. So do we. Let’s obsess over them together.
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