The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri and Shiva Baby’s Rachel Sennott lead the comedy.

By Molly Moss

Published: Friday, 01 September 2023 at 12:38 PM


Fight Club meets But I’m a Cheerleader in Emma Seligman’s and Rachel Sennott’s latest female-driven dark comedy, Bottoms, which follows their break-out hit Shiva Baby.

Bottoms was released in the US last weekend and made huge splash at the box office for an indie film, grossing $516,254 (£409,340) in a limited release on 10 screens.

The movie follows two queer high school outcasts, PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) as they start an all-girls fight club with the ulterior motive of sleeping with cheerleaders.

The result? Their fare share of bruised faces and bloody noses.

Naming a few of the film’s inspirations, Sennott said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly: “We had references in our mind in terms of Scott Pilgrim, Jennifer’s Body, Jawbreaker… all these different movies.

“But we also wanted to make sure we weren’t [just] doing one and that it was a mash-up of genres. It’s a campy high school movie, but it’s also an action movie.”

Adding that the film also contains its faire share of gore, Sennott continued: “I think no one actually thought that we were gonna make it bloody. We had our producers calling […] they were like, ‘Just for clarity, it’s not actually a fight club…?’ We were like, ‘It’s a fight club!’”