Totally Killer: The Sweet Sixteen Killer’s Mask Was Inspired By Famous Actors

Totally Killer is a new slasher comedy that just hit Amazon’s Prime Video, and it stars Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) as a teen who ends up traveling back in time to the 1980s to try and stop a serial killer. The movie was helmed by Nahnatchka Khan (Always Be My Maybe) and is currently “Certified Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes. In Totally Killer, the Sweet Sixteen Killer’s mask is a grinning, blonde man with a dangly earring that was designed by makeup artist Tony Gardner (Zombieland, Seed of Chucky). Khan recently revealed to Entertainment Weekly that the mask was modeled after some big stars of the 1980s.

The mask “had to originate in the ’80s, so you have to have that nostalgic vibe, but in our movie people still dress up like the killer in present-day, so I wanted it to feel a little bit relevant,” Khan explained. “We landed on the idea of a handsome man being terrifying. Tony Gardner [and] our design team started pulling ’80s heartthrob references, like Kiefer Sutherland and Rob Lowe and Dolph Lundgren, and even Johnny Bravo, and then exaggerated it and made the teeth oversized. The idea [was] that the last thing you see is this beautiful smile as you’re being killed.”

What Is Totally Killer About?

You can read the description of Totally Killer here: “Thirty-five years after the shocking murder of three teens, the infamous ‘Sweet Sixteen Killer’ returns on Halloween night to claim a fourth victim. Seventeen-year-old Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) ignores her overprotective mom’s (Julie Bowen) warning and comes face to face with the masked maniac and, on the run for her life, accidentally time travels back to 1987, the year of the original killings. Forced to navigate the unfamiliar and outrageous culture of the 1980s, Jamie teams up with her teen mom (Olivia Holt) to take down the killer once and for all, before she’s stuck in the past forever.”

Totally Killer also stars Charlie Gillespie, Lochlyn Munro, Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson, Liana Liberato, Kelcey Mawema, Stephi Chin-Salvo, Anna Diaz, Ella Choi, Jeremy Monn-Djasgnar, Nathaniel Appiah, Jonathan Potts, and Randall Park.

Will Totally Killer Get a Sequel?

“I think whatever [is] next would feel different, but I’d love to make something more in this space,” Kahn told EW when asked if Totally Killer would become a trilogy like Back to the Future, which is referenced multiple times in the new film. “I think they should go back to period times. It might be like a time-travel version of Remains of the Day.”

Totally Killer is now streaming on Prime Video.