Deadgirl, not Dead Girl.
Deadgirl.
This is yet another film in the “well we’ve got a basic premise, let’s start without a plot thing”. That puts it in the same category as Grace, Naked Fear, Killer Klowns From Outer Space and Doghouse, I could go on too.
For some reason Deadgirl has gotten a reputation as being edgy and controversial, and it has a key point that makes normal people go “eeeewwwwwww”.
Horror fans like that, it makes them feel special, like they can stomach something the “establishment” can’t. In the case of Deadgirl though it is just an odd piece of work that doesn’t work for a lot of reasons, regardless of the “eeeewwww” factor.
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Deadgirl starts with two losers named J and Ricky, not American Pie losers, real losers that if they weren’t characters in a film you would call them losers and not have a split second of guilty conscience. Put another way, they wear beanies because it’s cold and miserable, not as a “I hate my parents” statement, they ditch school to drink beers, not hang around at the mall.
On one such loser day, they bust out of school and head down to an abandoned asylum, where they promptly set about doing loser stuff, vandalism, smashing stuff randomly and graffiti. They come across a scably, nasty looking dog and have to go for a quick run the other way, and in trying to find a suitable exit they come across a nekkid female body.
Nekkid and tied down… and seemingly twitching a little…
Now as mentioned before, these guys are losers. They don’t really contemplate reporting the body or taking it to the authorities, they discuss whether or not to…
Long story short, there is an argument, a punch is thrown.
One goes, one stays.
The goer Ricky, heads home where he gets a “pep-talk” from his Mum’s loser boyfriend, he heads back to the building with a gun to further the discussion. J has been awaitin’, and far from runnin’ or dodgin’ the issue, he welcomes Ricky back with a check-this-out attitude.
And check it out they do. Turns out that the Deadgirl weren’t dead after all, far from it. So while JT was “introducing himself” to the young lady, she woke up and thrashed about, trying to bite him. So after he finished (I would assume) he had an ethical dilemma, but being that he had already made the jump to plow an inanimate cadaver, it isn’t such a leap to decide to punch the piss out of said inanimate being to make it stop.
Which is what he did, so he then caps a couple rounds into the body, and isn’t too surprised to see it recover almost instantly.
Again, being a horror movie, no-one really blinks at all of these goings on.
So JT wants to keep the deadgirl as his special squishy everready girlfriend, a DGF if you will. Ricky has the hots already for a schoolmate named Joanne, who unfortunately is NOT a loser, and is therefore out of his league. They have the inevitable “can we keep her” discussion, and it is agreed that they will do so, only they won’t tell anyone else.
Did I say JT was a loser?, pretty sure I did. So being a loser he breaks his own rule in the interest of bragging about all the (dead) p*ssy he be gettin’, and Ricky gets more and more skittish that this whole thing is getting out of hand.
Ricky decides that he must let the DGF go, but this only brings tension to proceedings, as JT had become more thoroughly attached to his significant other, and foolishly confident. Over the ensuing days more and more people discover what is happenning in the abandoned building, and foot traffic grows and grows to the point where it is amazing no-one noticed the sheer number of young idiots shuffling inanely in the same direction.
There are some nice moments in Deadgirl, some gore for those into that sorta thing, and the previously mentioned perverse concepts that will guarantee discussion points, but it is obvious that once again there just wasn’t enough in the script to fill 90 minutes and make a horror classic. This is a flavour of the month, here today, forgotten tomorrow throwaway.
And kids, if you watch this and start nodding and siding with JT, seek professional help now!
Final Rating – 5 / 10. Not awful, just nothing to recommend. Disposable stuff.
