Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
When the host of their high school reunion is discovered murdered, suspicion falls on five classmates and their professor – the only ones who stayed overnight and were present at the time of the crime.
Created by Chris Nelson (director), Willie Block (writer), and Jake Emanuel (writer), the 2024 comedy-thriller starts off by introducing childhood best friends Ray Hammond (Lil Rel Howery), a middling part-timer, and Evan West (Billy Magnussen), an average cop. The two of them are headed to a party, and they encounter their old classmate Jasmine Park (Jamie Chung), a journalist who is also on her way to the reunion at Mathew Danbury’s (Chace Crawford) mansion. Mathew, a popular jock, is now a wealthy hedge-fund manager.
The ensemble cast of Reunion is completed by Nina Dobrev, who plays former class president Amanda Tanner, now a successful politician running for Congress. Jillian Bell plays Vivian Chase, a weirdo who nobody can seem to remember, though she seems to have a grudge against most of her class. Michael Hitchcock plays their history teacher Theodore Buckley, who is the only non-classmate staying over at Mathew’s home after the party. Mathew’s body is found by Jasmine Park in the morning, shot dead, and they are all snowed in at his mansion, with no means to contact the outside world.
With a crisp 90-minute runtime, Reunion is a mildly funny thriller, where the jokes are relatively weak, but it’s the talented cast that carries the script with their fun performances. It’s definitely not a nail-biting murder mystery, even though, to the writers’ credit, there is indeed significant suspense over who might’ve murdered Mathew, especially since quite a few people have some motive to kill him.
Overall, Reunion is the kind of murder mystery you can enjoy when a few friends are over and you want to kill some time by watching something that does not demand too much of your attention.
Rating: 2.5 on 5. Watch Reunion on Netflix.
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