I would liken Deadgirl to a modern, more dynamic version of 1986′s Rob Reiner classic Stand by Me. It holds the parallels of teenage bonding, acceptance and a dead body. Shiloh Fernandez and Noah Segan play the parts of troubled teenagers Rickie and J.T. as they tackle the problems of peer pressure, school and their friendship. Like Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain there is an element to this movie that will jade your thoughts prior to even seeing it, but like Brokeback Mountain the story and plot should not be sacrificed in lieu of the scandalous scenes.
A complicated mixture of emotions plagued my mind as I sat to watch Deadgirl from within the miniature theater of friend’s home. Seeing it by myself was a bit different than the standard theater fare where I would have the option of turning to him and asking “what the hell is this?” The emotions started with intrigue, from the initial DVD menu which shows Rickie standing above the corpse of actress Jenny Spain – The dead girl. Upon clicking play and sitting back to enjoy what I assumed would be horror, it begins with two young 17 yr old boys skipping a day of high school. Standard par for the course, sure, but as the boys enter an abandoned building, begin to vandalize the place and eventually start to explore it’s expanse out of boredom, my emotion switched to anticipation. From anticipation, it changed my emotions to being appalled, then disgusted, a bit disappointed and lastly amazed. This is an awesome angle on an age old genre – the zombie genre.
What have you not seen done to a zombie within a movie? Think about it folks and I will try my best to offer no spoilers within this review, but I just want you to think about it. You have seen them burnt, maimed, decapitated and everything under the sun, but Deadgirl chooses to step out of the box in offering a more carnal treatment to the zombie equivalent. Upon watching the things that the students of Ricky’s high school took part in with the restless corpse of a beautiful girl, my mind dipped into a hopeless feeling for humanity and I had to ask. What backwoods, dirty area of America do these kids come from? You won’t understand until you see it, and I pray you do see it because it is THAT twisted a story.
On the surface Deadgirl may seem to be a dark story about an awful fetish but beneath it all is a story of acceptance and coming to age. Told from the angle of the outcast kid (both protagonists come from broken homes and inhabit the lower social circles within High School), we are shown the rejection of love and understanding and the settling for the absurd due to this. It is a dark psychological angle on the pursuit of happiness and what could lead us to commit the most heinous of acts. Yet still it doesn’t exactly succeed at this as it does in making you laugh in an embarrassing utterance of “what the hell?” I wish more emphasis was placed on the morally good character within the story as opposed to the constant violation of the corpse beauty. At the end of it all I simply felt that the story was more about a bond between two outcasts that wears thin as women… dead and alive come into play.
Deadgirl is a must-have for the zombie enthusiast. It is a love story, a teenage angst movie and a shock movie rolled into one. Having a dark sense of humor will suit to help your acceptance of this film, especially once the erm “thrusting” begins. A movie to keep far away from children but close enough to break out and played within the DVD player whenever friends are around. It is a sinful delight for your collection and a movie that you either love or get disgusted with and stop prior to the end. And the end will surely shock you as it alludes to the capability of anyone for “zombie love”.
In the end I finished it, smiled in summation of what I had just watched and proceeded to tell everyone I knew about it. It’s one of those type of movies.
Written by Greg Dragon – who has written 364 reviews on Spicy Movie Dogs.
Cinephile and opinion writer, Greg Dragon has been a fan of movies since the 80's when Kung Fu theater was all the rage and Roger Moore was James Bond. As an opinion writer that has reviewed Box Office releases on a number of prominent websites, Greg is the founder and lead critic of Spicy Movie Dogs.
