BOY EATS GIRL (2005) Movie Review

BOY EATS GIRL (2005)

Nathan is your average teen in a small town in Ireland, where he hangs out with his mates, and is secretly in love with his friend, Jessica. On the night that he prepares to tell Jessica his true feelings, he is tricked into believing that Jessica is out on a date with one of the school's jocks. Distraught with grief, he drinks himself into a stupor, and contemplates suicide by hanging, but when his mother walks into his room and knocks him from the chair, he actually does kill himself.

All is not lost though, as Nathan's mother has just uncovered a book on reanimation in the church she is restoring. She uses the book, and brings Nathan back from the dead, though he is unaware of his short trip to the afterlife. Although Nathan seems fine at first, he notices he no longer wants food of any type, and realizes that his strength has increased. On the night of the school dance, he gets into a fight with one of his tormentors and in a fit of rage bites him. This bite causes a chain reaction which soon has the entire student body and townspeople turning into vicious zombies. Only a few are left alive, including Jessica and Nathan's mates, but will they be able to find a way to stop the onslaught, or are they just the next course on the menu?

Although not as romantic or comedic as SHAUN OF THE DEAD, this entry into the niche rom-com-zom sub-genre is still a fun movie to watch, and runs circles around MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK. The teen-angst portion of the storyline is nothing new, but coupled with believable above-average acting and the addition of Irish accents, it makes it more watchable than most current teen comedies.

Once the zombie action begins about half-way through the film, the caro syrup and rubber limbs come out for some good old fashioned gutmunching. The zombies in BOY EATS GIRL are the running and hunting type, who pursue and tackle their pray. Stomachs are pulled open, intestines are spilled out and heads are bashed open. During the final sequence, Jessica dispatches a horde of zombies in a way that must have been written in an attempt to one-up the lawnmower scene in BRAINDEAD, and although it does not take the crown, gorehounds will surely squeal with delight.

BOY EATS GIRL is by no means a perfect zombie movie, and does have a few glaring absences of explanation, the biggest being why Nathan does not turn into a full zombie for the whole of the movie, while all the other victims become zombies immediately. For that matter, why does a reanimated corpse who bites someone cause them to become a zombie to begin with? The answer is, it really doesn't matter. The film does not seem to latch itself onto any specific zombie rulebook, nor does it try to instill any amount of seriousness into the movie.

For fans of the above mentioned films, as well as Japan's STACY or IDLE HANDS, this rom-com-zom is highly worth the rental for a few chuckles and ewwws.