Boy Eats Girl – DVD Review

Film, Reviews

Available at Amazon.com

Director

Stephen Bradley

Cast

Samantha Mumba………Jessica
David Leon………Nathan
Laurence Kinlan………Henry
Tadhg Murphy………Diggs
Sara James………Cheryl
Mark Huberman………Samson
Deirdre O’Kane………Grace
Bryan Murray………Mr. Frears

DVD Release Date: December 18, 2007
Rating: R
Running Time: 80 Minutes

The Movie

Nathan and Jessica are really good high school friends. The not so secret though is that Nathan really wants to be more with Jessica. Little does he know that she also wants to be more with him. After much encouragement and actually a little text messaging help from his closest friends, the date is set up for Nathan to tell Jessica how he feels. He’s going to meet up with her at the old shack and proclaim his love for her so they can be truly happy together.

The time rolls around and he’s set up the shack with candles and is practicing exactly how he plans on telling Jessica his true feelings. But elsewhere, Jessica’s dad has forbidden her from leaving the house and by the time she’s able to sneak out and make it to the shack, Nathan has gone. To make matters worse, Nathan places a phone call to her house and her dad tells him that Jessica went off with another guy. Nathan even sees Jessica in a compromising position in one of the snobby guy’s cars and gets even more depressed. What Nathan didn’t know is that Jessica hates that guy and was only getting a ride home from him since it was raining.

It doesn’t matter though because the scene and rejection was just too much for Nathan to handle so he went home and drowned his sorrows in some alcohol. All liquored up and feeling bad about everything in his life, he candidly places a noose around his neck. The next thing you know, his mom opens the door to his bedroom knocking him over and thus killing her own son. Through the powers of an ancient holy book, she is able to bring him back to life. But because a page was missing out of the book, she didn’t complete the ritual and brought back her son, but as a flesh-eating zombie. They’ve got to do something to resolve the problem before it’s too late and he infects the whole town.

Boy Eats Girl is trying to be a horror film. It isn’t scary. Boy Eats Girl is trying to be a comedy. It isn’t funny. Yet still somehow it manages to be semi-enjoyable through all of its faults. The way it accomplishes that is through Diggs (Tadhg Murphy) and Henry (Laurence Kinlan). These two are the side character buddies of Nathan and provide some extremely funny moments and one-liners that are sure to having you laughing. It’s just a shame that there isn’t more of them, or better yet only them in the entire film.

The title itself is misleading because it insinuates that the lead character Nathan would be going after eating the other lead character Jessica, but that isn’t the case. He never once goes after her since for some reason he doesn’t lust for human flesh nearly as much as those who are infected by Samson. Samson was the initial and only person Nathan happened to take a bite out of. All of the new zombies immediately turn into lifeless flesh eaters while Nathan seems to take forever to change over. It just doesn’t make much sense, but then again not much does.

Let’s take for instance the main thing that set off the entire zombie, flesh-eating phenomenon. Nathan’s mother was seen working in a church for all of two minutes and stumbled upon a secret passageway (with forever-burning candles) that contained a crypt that contained the sacred book. The Father of the church tells her to leave and boom, that’s that. Some boredom occurs, the freakish suicide/murder, and then Nathan is resurrected in the matter of thirty seconds in some trippy montage. No time is spent on it at all. I mean come on, give us a ritual or something.

Boy Eats Girl is good because of Murphy and Kinlan, and also because it is extremely short. If the film had been any longer, I would have wanted to eat my own brain. There is one small jump-scare in the entire film and it actually got the best of both my girlfriend and me. Other then that, don’t go expecting much in the way of fright. And let it be known that it will also take at least ten minutes to get used to the accents and fully understand what everyone is saying. It’s not horrible and actually there are worse ways you could spend an evening, but the stupidity and plotholes are going to cloud your mind quicker then you can have a pint of ale.

The Video

The film is shown in 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen format and looks just fine. All brighter colors including a lot of blood look good while the darker scenes, of which there aren’t many, never get to the point where you can’t see anything.

The Audio

The film is heard in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and it actually sounds pretty good. All dialogue can be heard clearly and the music is rather good. The one problem is that sometimes the music got just way too loud and annoying.

Special Features

Eating Out: The Making Of Boy Eats Girl – This is a close to seven minute “making of” featurette that is just the cast and crew talking about the film as fifty clips of film roll on. Nothing exciting and nothing too groundbreaking.

TrailersWerewolf: The Devil’s Hound, Skinwalkers, Fido, Invasion, Night Of The Living Dead 3-D,and Fearnet.com

The Inside Pulse

Amazingly enough, I don’t recommend completely avoiding this DVD. For those nights when you’re bored and have walked through the video store at least five times, Boy Eats Girl could give you enough entertainment for at least and hour and a half of entertainment. The special features are nothing, but the film is passable as a last resort. Just make sure to pay attention to Nathan’s bungling friends because they deliver some classic facial expressions and great laughs. Guess Samantha Mumba’s musical career wasn’t quite working for her. Doesn’t seem as if her acting career is going to have any more success if she keeps this up.

The DVD Lounge’s Ratings for Boy Eats Girl
CATEGORY
RATING
(OUT OF 10)
THE MOVIE

4
THE VIDEO

8
THE AUDIO

8
THE EXTRAS

1
REPLAY VALUE

0
OVERALL
3.5
(NOT AN AVERAGE)