Boy Eats Girl

I have never been a huge fan of foreign films, although when it comes to horror I am a little more open minded, as with Shaun of the Dead, which I liked almost immediately, and Dead Alive, which took a little more time to like (I had to get past the accents.) Not that I am opposed to accents, but rather the sense of humor found in foreign films is not quite on the same plane as mine, meaning either I am too dense to “get it” or it’s too Monty Python (which I can’t stand.)

Probably it’s both.

So it turns out that Boy Eats Girl is a little Irish nugget of gold, and my only disappointment is that I did not discover it sooner. This movie wonderfully adds a comedic twist to what is a horrific situation, and I find that combination to be very entertaining. Plus the movies primary focus is zombies and who could ask for more than that??

Boy Eats Girl starts out with heartbroken Nathan (admirably played by some guy named David Leon whom I have never heard of) who, due to an unfortunate chain of events that even Shakespeare would have been pleased with, manages to get himself hung by the short end of a noose he just happened to have hanging in his room. Talk about bad luck (I wonder if we’re related?)

As it turns out, Nathan’s mom (who played a big role in his getting hanged, by the way) just happens to work at a church whose library just happens to have a book on Haitian voodoo that she just happened to swipe sometime earlier (the sinner!) that just happens to explain how to bring a person back from the dead! Needless to say she wastes no time in putting this book to good use.

Well to everyone’s mom’s delight, Nathan wakes up the next day appearing normal and ready to face yet another day with his broken heart (because he thinks the girl of his dreams is doing some other guy) and wounded pride for not being a good rugby player. Now if only he could make the sandpaper feeling in his throat go away……

Later that night at a classmates party, Nathan temporarily loses control of his senses and hauls off and bites the school bully, rugby king Samson. Well, maybe bite isn’t the proper verbiage to use. What Nathan actually did was violently rip out a hunk of Samson’s cheek with his teeth! Yikes!

Well in shock and denial of what he had done, Nathan runs off home with his tail between his legs while Samson, now turned zombie, decides to go on an eating spree of all those readily available teenagers, who in turn, waste no time in sharing the infection love with others. In a matter of hours they achieve sheer pandemonium!

Yeh, it was pretty awesome to watch….

Although Boy Eats Girl is not laden with guts and dismemberment, there is a substantial amount of bloodshed that I found sufficient to satisfy my tastes once the movie got under way. Unfortunately however, the writers completely ignored the rules of zombie-ism, and that my friends, is not cool.

For starters, one does not have to be killed in order to become a zombie, one simply has to be infected - either by a bite or fluid exchange; you get the idea. I don’t know about you guys, but I want my zombies un-dead… not un-alive!

Secondly these zombies are fast! WTF??? When did fast zombies become a criteria for Hollywood? Movie after movie keeps portraying them as fast… I guess I might as well get used to the idea, but no one said I had to like it!

Thirdly is that the zombies are easily killed. You don’t have to deliver a head shot or severing of the spine. Of course head shots and severings help, but you can also sucker punch them, or run them over and be just as effective. It kinda takes the scare factor out of it when you think about it.

But you wanna know something? I could deal with all these zombie screwups. After all, this movie was fun and campy and cheesy, and even if the zombies were a bit unorthodox, they were still zombies. And that was a good thing.

But what wasn’t a good thing is the part I haven’t told you yet; the part where the zombie state could be reversed. Appalling, I know but it gets even worse. The way to reverse zombie-ism is with a bite from a specific snake, and wouldn’t you know it’s a snake that Nathan’s mom just happened to have penned up at the church! Talk about crazy luck!

While the two main characters did not produce the memorable star crossed lovers that great literature is made of, the supporting cast at least delivers great bubblegum laughs that are definitely note worthy. First you have Nathan’s two bumbling loser friends who are too dense to realize they are losers (much like the knuckleheads in Idle Hands) and the school tramp hottie who does whatever it takes to get the man she wants. She’s a bitch - and she makes sure you know it.

So… aside from a few weak spots, Boy Eats Girl was really entertaining. You have to take into account that in addition to my fetish for zombies, I love teenage fluff movies and this one seems to be a happy blending of the two. If that is your cup of goo tea, then you will enjoy this one as well. If not…. well…. watch it anyway, cuz zombies rule!

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