The zombie film may be running its course of late.  Not to say that another film won’t come along and provide us with another undead renaissance, but we’ve seen fast zombies and slow zombies, brain-eating and flesh-eating, generally in modestly-budgeted films that have little going for them save an excess of gore or effects.  All that serves as introduction to a film that has a zombie in it, technically, but it isn’t exactly a “zombie” movie.  We’ll get to that.

Filmmakers Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, co-directors on this film, have taken a script by Trent Haaga (Hell Asylum) and fashioned it into a fascinating, if uneven, exploration of male sexuality at the moment it finds its first expression - the teenage years.

Best friends Ricky (Shiloh Fernandez) and J.T. (Noah Segan) are outcasts.  Not the stereotypical outcasts you see in so many high-school centered comedies, but the fringe inhabitants who wander through the same hallways as their more popular counterparts, only garnering attention when they

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ecause ripples in the waters of the social norm.  As such, they rely on each other to stay entertained, along with sometimes compatriot Wheeler (Eric Podnar).  Ricky is the quiet one, maybe a bit of a follower, still eyeing the girl that got away (when they were twelve), JoAnn (Candice Accola).  She’s moved on, spending time with a jock with a letter on his jacket while Ricky peers at her from a distance through the links of a fence.  At home, Ricky’s Mom is conspicuously absent, leaving behind an alcoholic boyfriend to offer slurring advice on how to be a man.

Things would continue on like this until graduation, when, perhaps, Ricky and J.T. would find a job together somewhere, but college doesn’t see to be in the cards for either.  One afternoon, wasting away the time with some stolen smokes and beers in an abandoned hospital, the boys come across a girl, shackled to a bed, dazed and dirty.  This girl,  portrayed by Jenny Spain, proves to be a bit life-challenged, as J.T. fires several shots into her to prove to his friend that the chained, naked figure is, in fact, not exactly alive, despite her movement.  

Naturally, the boys become obsessed with the girl, keeping her hidden in the small room

where they found her.  J.T. is the first to suggest the unthinkable.  Why not have a not-so-romantic evening with the lovely, if decomposing, girl?  She’s not exactly alive, right, so it’s not exactly rape?  Right?  You just have to be careful to avoid her choppers, it turns out, but it’s a lesson learned a little late for one character.

The sexual explorations of J.T. and Wheeler consume and disgust Ricky, who can’t decide if they have stumbled across the greatest treasure in the history of adolescent males, or if there is something deeply wrong with the ever-growing obsession of his friends.  As the film plays out, it’s a discussion that is had through violence, attempted kidnapping and murder.

Deadgirl is a different kind of film, and any regular reader knows that different is always a welcome change from the usual creature features and zombies run amuck films that haunt the movie screens and DVD queues these days.  On that point alone, I award Deadgirl some credit.  But this is more than just an experimental film; it’s a downright divisive one.  Due to the subject matter, there are those who are going to write this film off as a fetishistic, adolescent fantasy, and that is not entirely false, but that fetishism is precisely what Deadgirl is about.  The movie serves as an occasionally darkly comic look at what gets young men off and the manner in which they perceive women, especially at an age when sex itself is more important than the person with whom you are having sex.

Having had the opportunity to speak to the directors recently, I was surprised to learn that the reaction by most women has been positive, which makes sense when you consider the relative maturation of women to men when dealing with matters of this sort.  They just seem to get how dumb the penis can make the man, and Deadgirl is an exploration of bad choices made by the little head.  

Sometimes sadistic, often surprising, this is a movie that I hope horror fans embrace as both unusual and contemplative, a combination so often lacking in film.

The sexual explorations of J.T. and Wheeler consume and disgust Ricky, who can’t decide if they have stumbled across the greatest treasure in the history of adolescent males, or if there is something deeply wrong with the ever-growing obsession of his friends.  As the film plays out, it’s a discussion that is had through violence, attempted kidnapping and murder.