Two high school friends ditch school to go drinking in this abandoned asylum. They get lost after an encounter with a dog and end up finding a body. The body is of a dead girl, naked and chained to a table. The twist is she is not dead, but the undead. What would the normal thing to do in this situation be? Well, one of the guys thinks it's to have sex with her and keep her as their sex slave. Things obviously get out of control.
Dead Girl was a little film that I heard about after reading a list of the Top Ten Most Disturbing Movies You'll Ever See. With that in mind, I went into Dead Girl expecting sick and twisted things. I got those, but not to the degree I was thinking of. Sure the scenario is sick and disturbing, but I find that if I went in not knowing anything about it, it would have had a more profound effect on me. Sexuality plays a big part in this film, the homosexual subtext between the two friends early on sets up some kind of weird relationship that isn't really explored till the end. These guys objectify women. They are virgins and want to loose their v-card, so seeing a naked girl chained up to a table unleashes these weird sexual urges in one of them. She tries to bite him and he beats her, breaks her neck as well.
Uh-Oh, she is not dead. They discover she can't die, the guy even shoots her to prove it. Yes, one character has a gun, and the scene is so poorly written that you can tell they needed a simply way of telling the audience this girl is dead. So we give a character a random gun that is used in this random scene and it is never seen again. The two friends immediately take opposing sides. One is in love with the idea and even invites others to join, while the other finds it sick and disturbing. The one in love with the idea becomes twisted and obsessed with his unorthodox relationship with this dead girl.
The analogy to boys growing up and exploring their sexuality is lost in this film, they resort to rape. I felt bad for the actress who had to lay there naked being used in such a horrific way. By the end of the film, it felt as if there was no real protagonist and everyone was evil. The comedy fell flat in some areas and seemed really random in others.
The subject matter is indeed interesting though and the filmmakers handled it in a mature way. It is not your average zombie film. You know that the climax of the film will involve her getting loose somehow. So there are no real surprises in the film. The twists and turns are really seen a mile away. Some people might find it hard to enjoy a film that is about necrophilia. I for one thought it started off well and then gradually had it's ups and downs. The inclusion of the other guys (Wheeler and two bullies) seemed to show the writers were a bit inept, the dialogue didn't help it either.
The subject matter is controversial and so is the film, to a degree. It's not the most horrifying film I've ever seen, nor does it really tip the ice berg. But then again, you are probably not like me. Constant images of a naked woman chained up, beaten to a pulp, bloody, raped and degraded might bother some people. The horror aspect is left until the end when it becomes more of a conventional horror film. It's the unsettling mood and themes this film has that make people uneasy with it. I can only recommend this to people who are actually interesting in this type of stuff. This is not for your every day movie goer.
