Directed by Stephen Bradley, 2005

Boy loves girl. Boy has misunderstanding, is devestated by girl. Boy kills himself. Mother raises boy from the dead. Such is Boy Eats Girl.

There is something about any high school horror movie that I am just a sucker for. Maybe it is the idea of an entire high school class - all the people you like, all the people you hate - being subject to a horror (almost exclusively the undead) that turns their town into a free-for-all of laughable deaths. Maybe it is the predictability of all these scenarios that is so charming. I don’t know what it is, but I have a weak spot for ‘em. I dug the trailer for the Irish born Boy Eats Girl a few months ago, so when it popped back up on my radar I thought I’d give it a look.

It is watchable, but it dissapoints.

The concept is entertaining enough, but the execution of it all is where it goes awry. Firstly, the love-stricken zombie boy never passes as actually being love-stricken. The love herself (Samantha Mumba, an Irish singer who was also the love in the Time Machine remake) is just plain boring, not to mention she has an incredibly weird skull. Apparently she is a direct decendent of the missing link, because her skeletal structure is just odd. The two best friends (there are always two, aren’t there?) are good and function nicely as the loveable backup, but they never are given any truly interesting scenes.

Then there is the actual process of re-animation/ghoulification, which is curteousy of a ritual performed by the mother, who jacked an ancient vodoo book from a crypt in an Irish church (yah..). It feels slapped together, but whatever, an excuse for zombies is an excuse for zombies. It is a bit silly and not in a it-knows-it way. :\

The makeup effects are fairly weak when the killings start out, but the ante is upped towards the end as it turns into a bloodbath (albeit a meek one) and occasionally there is a pretty impressive feat accomplished (especially considering the obviously shallow budget). Plus, there is a throwback to the genre landmark that was the lawnmower scene in Dead Alive that involves a small farm combine, which is cute in its gory ways.

I’ve been rather ambiguous about whether I actually liked the movie so far. It is watchable in that it never greatly offends the genre, but it never gets in the zone. The poster bills it as ‘wickedly funny’, which it never is. I don’t even really remember laughing at all (except at the idea that the zombies were cured by the bite from a certain snake). But hey, I’m not Irish.
And man, doesn’t the lead look like Michael Jackson in Thriller?