Deadgirl (2008)

Starring: Shiloh Fernandez, Noah Segan, Eric Podner, Jenny Spain, Candice Accola, Michael Bowen
Writer: Trent Haaga
Directors: Marcel Sarimento and Gadi Harel

The first time I watched my screener copy of Deadgirl, I silently took it out of my player, placed it in its case, and put it on my shelf. My thoughts after watching the film were so upsetting that I couldn't quite articulate my feelings about it. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. I knew I had to watch it again to organize my thoughts, but for some reason, my hand refused to pick up that disc and put it back in the player.

And when I finally did watch Deadgirl again for the purposes of this review, I remembered what it was that was keeping me from watching. Her eyes. Deadgirl is on one level a perfectly functional zombie flick (and quite literal, since there's one zombie, singular), and a somewhat mediocre one, but on another level writer Trent Haaga and directors Marcel Sarimento and Gadi Harel have given the viewer a deeply disturbing experience.

SoCal misfit teens Rickie (Fernandez) and J.T. (Segan) are two incredibly average slackers looking to get blitzed in the local abandoned asylum. Rickie is still carrying a torch for JoAnn Hawkins (Accola, a long way from Vampire Diaries, and with red hair!) who kissed him in the fourth grade. J.T. is just J.T. Exploring the asylum, the duo come upon a dead nude body (Spain). But not completely dead, no - it's the Deadgirl of the title, a woman who has been tied up and left for dead. There's something wrong with her; her eyes don't seem to really look at them, she doesn't even seem to acknowledge their presence or even her own situation. Rickie is freaked and wants to call the cops, but J.T. is oddly fascinated. After all, she's alive, but she's naked, tied up, and hey, no one's around. It couldn't hurt to, say, sample her a bit? Who's gonna know? Rickie is disgusted and J.T. responds by giving him a split lip, but then comes to Rickie later with a discovery: the girl can't die. You hit her, you strangle her, you shoot her - the wounds don't really heal but she keeps on breathing. As J.T. declares later in the film, "this is the best we're ever gonna do!" Rickie is still disgusted, and when J.T. shares their secret with Wheeler (Podner) a boy even more socially maladjusted than the two of them, it's a matter of time before everyone is going to want a taste of the Deadgirl. Rickie only has eyes for JoAnn, though. If only she'd talk to him, though, and stop seeing that lame jock. If only she'd remember.

So yeah: on the surface, Deadgirl is about a zombie. But it's also about the sexual obsession that can grip teenagers in vise and never let up. The filmmakers understand how certain emotions and impulses can be amplified in a kid's head to the point where something totally repellent becomes not only a viable option, but in their minds, the only option.

The Deadgirl may be a mindless monstrous husk, but every scene of J.T. and Wheeler raping her is even more horrific and disgusting than the gore and violence that populate the film's last half hour. Sarimento and Harel direct the majority of the film as a sort of Romero by David Lynch. Transitions are dreamlike, there are plenty of shots of lights and street signs (the opening is a series of shots of the empty school), the music is ambient. Sometimes they throw in a cheap shock or two (mainly using a scary dog) but their direction is very deliberate when dealing with the Deadgirl herself. Sarimento's background is in romantic comedies (this is Harel's first feature length project), so this film, to say the least, shows he can do much more than that. They also do some very clever editing during the sex scenes; obviously it was done to secure an R rating, of which I admired their use.

The skilled direction can't cover up the script, which starts out well but soon peters out despite the subject matter. Haaga's background is in schlock- his writing debut was, of all things, Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV. With Deadgirl he's tackling far weightier themes, but hasn't created characters worthy of those themes. Rickie is a sympathetic protagonist, but he has two modes - disgusted with J.T. and obsessed with JoAnn. It's easy to figure out where the story will eventually take him, and thus hard to really care or be horrified where he ends up because he's such a creep, even if he's not a rapist (and where he ends up is pretty freakin' implausible).

Fernandez is decent in the role, but isn't able to give him the depth that the script lacks. Haaga saddles the character with a stock loner background- his dad is gone, his mom's working all the time, and he has no friends besides J.T. and Wheeler. The film's most prominent adult is the alcoholic boyfriend of Rickie's mother, played by Bowen (of course), but it's a nothing role and he could have been excised from the film entirely. The film's deletion of adults honestly feels like a bit of a dodge.

J.T. is a bigger problem. The character is a pervy prick from the start (and doesn't even have a background, and only becomes a bigger prick, and his and Rickie's friendship never really feels real or important, which is too bad since a good chunk of the plot depends on it.) Segan's portrayal of the character is far too one note (by the end he's cartoonishly villainous), and the dialogue Haaga gives him feels to smart, too knowing, almost as if he's been reading the script between fuck breaks and determining what the story is about. Wheeler is more of a plot device than anything else, and Podner has some good moments but like Fernandez, is defeated by the script.

The best performance in the film comes from Accola. JoAnn is as thinly drawn as the other three main characters, but at least with her it's part of the point (since Rickie, who can't see her as anything more than an ideal, is the point of view character) and she gives the character a sweetness that makes one understand why Rickie wants her so badly, and her reaction to what's happening to her at the end is heartbreaking.

How the film gets to that ending, however, doesn't quite work. The movie gets more conventional as it goes along, as plot holes pile up (wouldn't some of the deaths that occur garner more attention?) and in a rather annoying contrivance, character A appears out of nowhere in the middle of a scene, as if they magically know where character B was going to be, completely ignoring that character B was just seconds before in the middle of committing a crime, demanding information and willing to go with character B, despite the fact that character A should know better, because the plot needs to wrap the movie up already.

And yet, as disappointing as the film is, it really stuck with me. The makeup and sound effects are excellent. Spain's Deadgirl is disgusting and creepy, yet serene and almost pretty in a way that you can see why J.T. finds her so appealing. The filmmakers really succeed in making the whole situation properly repellent and genuinely frightening as the boys lose their tenuous holds on their sanity, despite that they're not too likable.

Deadgirl, as a story, doesn't quite work, and with a little more script revisions I think it might have been a more powerful experience, and one of the best horror films I'd seen in years. As is, it's an uneven film. But damn, did it ever stick with me. I'm not going to lie to you: this review took me a very long time to write, because the film forced me to confront my own feelings about horror films, and women.

Sarimento, Harel, and Haaga are subtly tweaking the women as victim trope- here's a woman who would normally be the monster and yet the Deadgirl is continually victimized in ways that made me physically ill. The depraved indifference of the victimizers causes the viewer to reflect on their own indifference towards the victims they see on the screen. After all, we watch horror films to see a lot of dead girls ourselves. We're rarely disappointed. And sometimes, don't we want to see the pretty girl sacrificed, because in our heads she's ours, and in our minds, maybe we get to save her? The filmmakers, at the least, deserve to be commended for provoking the viewer to question these ideas, even if they don't quite follow through on them.

I think my feelings about Deadgirl, in the end, are summed up by an exchange I had with my mother 20 years ago when she was complaining about my desire to see Friday the 13th movies. My keen analytical 11-year-old self responded, "Who cares, it's just mindless killing!" My mother responded, "But then people watch these things and think it's okay!" Usually when I think of that I brush it off with a laugh, but I guess somewhere along the line, J.T. thought it was "okay". And look how well that turned out.

Rating: (3 out of 5):