Monday, September 08, 2008

Deadgirl

Marcel Sarmiento + Gadi Harel | 2008 | 101 mins | USA

When I first heard about Deadgirl, it was described to me as “a coming of age story with a zombie sex slave ... but really tastefully done”. Deadgirl turned out to be more hilarious and more disturbing than that description, by far.

Teenage skids JT (Noah Segan) and Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) tool around drinking beers in an abandoned hospital, when they stumble upon a girl in the basement who's chained to a gurney. While Rickie sensibly thinks they should get the fuck out of there, JT's creepy suggestion is that they have a little "fun" with the incapacitated hot babe instead.

Things turn super creepy after JT realises that their captive is neither dead nor alive, and starts becoming increasingly obsessed with her, spending his nights in the dank basement and no longer turning up at school at all. Meanwhile, Rickie pines for his childhood crush JoAnn (now predictably a beautiful girl dating the school's most popular jock) and tries to keep the "dead girl" situation from spiraling out of control as more and more people hear about the dirty secret in the basement.

There are a lot of great, gross-out / creepy-as-fuck moments in Deadgirl that I don't want to give away, but hopefully young directors Gadi Harel and Marcel Sarmiento (the dude behind the dog-love romantic comedy Heavy Petting) will have some luck selling this one at TIFF, in spite of the controversial subject matter.

No comments: