Rich idea, poor execution.
Director: Marcel Sarmiento
Cast: Shiloh Fernandez, Noah Segan
Country: USA
Just when you thought the new wave of American zombie movies was finally dead and buried, along comes Deadgirl, an interesting low-budget film that takes the zombie genre to a whole new, controversial level: zombie rape. But worry not: it is not the type of torture-porn (such as Martyrs, from France) your mind might conjure up when you think of such a disgusting concept. Instead, Deadgirl forces it’s viewers, especially young men, to ask themelves if love and sex can be one in the same, and where do we draw the line when it comes to feeding our sexual desires.
Two high school buddies, JT and Rickie (oh yeah, the movie is full of generic names), are sexually frustrated loners with a whole lot of teenage angst. They spent their free time getting high and drunk in abandoned buildings and venting about girl and school problems. One night after school they break in to an abandoned asylum to hang out and find a filthy, naked girl chained down in the basement. The two argue whether to call the police or not but soon find out that the girl cannot be killed and whatever wounds they inflict on her quickly heal on their own. While Rickie is a little more sympathetic to the situation of this undead girl, JT takes full advantage and starts to skip school to spend his days raping her, experimenting on her, and using her as his punching bag, even having some friends over to join in. If that’s not brutal enough, he even cuts new holes in to her stomach to penetrate when she “dries up”. It’s not long before JT figures out that anyone and anything bitten by the girl becomes just like her and so he hatches a plan to kidnap and create more “deadgirls”.
“Zombie rape” would seem like a dead give away that this is going to be heavy on the shock value, but other than the controversial subject matter itself, Deadgirl is pretty tame. I’m not asking for excess gratuity here, but every scene involving blood-letting has the camera cutting away from the action, even when the circumstances are downright perturbed anyway. An example of this is a scene where a young man shits out his own intenstinal tract, but the camera only allows us a half-second blink at what’s happening. The script calls for some heavy violence, sex and gore, but the viewer sees none of it, which may or may not be a question of funding.
The characters and the actors portraying them also cripple the movie quite a bit. As I had mentioned, the kids’ names are plain and typical (Rickie, JT, Johnny, Clint, Wheeler, to name a few) and 80% of the dialogue is teen-drama type trash (“I’m just trying to defend your honour, baby!”). Rickie and JT are supposed to be the freaky high school outcasts but look as though they stepped off the cover of a Sears catalogue.
There are also a lot of loose ends that the movie doesn’t tie up on it’s own. Plot holes, if you will. I won’t get into the lot of them as to not give away too much about the movie, but let’s just say that we really have no idea how JT figures out that this “zombie-ism” can be spread as you never once see it happen in action. The dead girl even takes a massive bite out of a dog not even halfway through, and we never see that dog again.
Despite having a really fresh take on the whole zombie fad, Deadgirl is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination. It’s full of innovative ideas and powerful messages about our compassion and sexuality, but it’s ruined by having too many loose ends and some very amateur-ish acting. Still, it’s worth at least one viewing for the sake of being the only movie of it’s kind in a stale market.
