Review: Deadgirl

Sooooooooo months ago my roommate comes downstairs and says "Have you heard about this new where some kids rape a zombie?". Me, being the horror loving fanatic that I am, responded "Of course I’ve been hearing about this for months now, and I don't think that’s exactly what it's about....". Fast forward several months later, I finally get a chance to watch Deadgirl and it turns out that, yes that IS exactly what its about.

Hopefully you didn't stop reading the review right there because, despite the subject matter, it was actually a very moving tale of love, friendship and heartbreak. See the plot involves two delinquent teens, Ricky and J.T., whom, while cutting school one day, decide to explore the local neighborhood abandoned insane asylum. While there they find a room which has been sealed shut for what looks like years and years. Within the room they find a naked girl gagged and chained to a metal table, who starts moving and groaning when the boys disturb her. Ricky's first thought is to call the police and help the girl get free, while J.T.'s intentions are summed up by four words "We can keep her". When Ricky tries to argue with him he J.T. strikes his friend and chases him away. The next day J.T finds his friend and apologizes, then explains that while he was, errrr, "pleasing himself" with the girl he ending up choking her to death, but discovers she couldn't die. What follows is a power struggle between Ricky and J.T. as Ricky is too meek too stop his friend (but does try some ill-fated rescue attempts), and J.T. enters into a downward spiral of degradation, until the movie reaches it's explosive climax.

When I was a kid I read a story by Harlan Ellison called "I have no mouth, yet I must scream!", and I hated it. Years later I re-read the story and realized that I didn't hate the story, I hated the characters and more specifically, what happened to the characters. After watching Deadgirl I felt exactly the same way. I really wanted to like Ricky, but his inability to stand up to his increasingly abusive friend was annoying to say the least. Don't even get me started on J.T. (who was pretty willing to rape and choke a girl to death before he realized she was a zombie). Needless to say when the final confrontation happens your pretty happy to see Ricky actually DOING SOMETHING. I guess you could give the guy some leeway considering he's a teenager, except that fact is easy to forget, because NONE OF THE CHARACTERS LOOK LIKE TEENAGERS!

Now don't get me wrong, despite it's short comings, I did really enjoy this movie (well as much as you can enjoy a movie like this). You don't see many movies wherein the monster is the victim (I can only really think of Bub from Day of the Dead). Jenny Spain does an AMAZING job as the Deadgirl, going from snarling beast to helpless victim in a heartbeat. Seriously this is probably the hardest role an actress could do and she was far and away the best actress/actor in the movie. As for what the Deadgirl is or where she came from they never really explain it and the movie never even uses the "z word". I really liked this but it lead to some misleading trailers that made the movie seem more mysterious then it was (see intro paragraph).

Final verdict is that this is definitely a movie that should be watched at least once. It's not really a happy or nice movie, but as far as being horrifying, it does it's job.