Boy Eats Girl (2005)

User Lists:
Zombie Classics

58%
Overall Rating

Ranked #6,105
...out of 20,690 movies

Genres: Horror Horror Comedy Teen Horror Zombie Film

A boy declares his love for his girlfriend, only to die the same night. He is brought back to life by his mother as a flesh-craving zombie, who sires more teen undead while trying to control his, er, appetite for his beloved. --IMDb

Review by Chad
Added: April 1, 2006

Just twenty-four hours ago (give or take), I reviewed Hide And Creep for this site and mentioned how it was unfairly compared to Shaun Of The Dead in the promotional materials. It's funny because shortly after writing that review, Boy Eats Girl showed up in my mailbox. Now, if there was ever a film that deserved to be compared to Shaun, this would be it... and for the benefit of the Americans out there in reader-land, I'm going to run down my thoughts on the film before the North American release date is even announced. Aren't I such a nice guy?

Before getting into my thoughts, the obligatory synopsis is as follows. It all centers around the teen romance between Jessica (pop-star Samantha Mumba) and Nathan (David Leon)... or, should I say, the lack of romance between these two. You see, Jessica is in love with Nathan, and Nathan is in love with Jessica, but both of them are afraid of rejection and therefore, neither of them wants to make the first move. Her friends keep telling her to go after him and his friends tell him the same, but you know how shy teens are these days. Nathan's friends Diggs (Tadhg Murphy) and Henry (Laurence Kinlan) have had enough of his pussy-footing around, so they decide to set up a "date" between the two in an old cabin where they will be alone for the evening and he can finally tell her how he feels. Everything is set up nicely, but a series of odd coincidences prevents Jessica from showing up, and when she finally manages to get there, Nathan has already left in tears over this "rejection".

He returns home and decides to get drunk in order to soften the blow, and as he's gulping down the last of the booze, he notices the decorative noose that is hanging a poor teddy bear from his ceiling and suicidal thoughts start running through his brain. He decides that that is the only way out, so he stands on a chair, puts the noose around his neck, and... decides that life really is worth living. However, at that very moment, his mother bursts through his bedroom door, knocking over his chair and killing her only son in the process. Heartbroken, she turns to a book of voodoo rituals that was recently found in her church and manages to reanimate her sons corpse. The only problem is that, while he still retains his old memories, he has a bizarre hunger for human flesh thanks to mother dearest screwing up the spell... and after a fight between Nathan and the local jock Samson (Mark Huberman) ends in bloodshed, this strange hunger begins to infect the entire town.

Shaun was what is now known as a "ZomComRom" (Zombie Comedy Romance), and tonight's Irish offering follows in those same footsteps. It worked out quite nicely in Shaun, and likewise, it works out very nicely here. However, the difference in the movies is where the main emphasis of the film lays; Shaun was a horror-comedy with some light romance thrown in, but Boy Eats Girl is a horror-romance with a sprinkling of comedy thrown in. I didn't expect this mixture to work out, personally, but I still had to see the end results for myself. Now then, after watching this much too short film (it runs about seventy-five minutes), I can safely say this: Boy Eats Girl is destined to be just as popular as Shaun when it hits America.

The film starts out pretty slowly on the horror side of things; we begin by seeing how this bizarre relationship between the two stars works, we slowly become attached to them, and we see things through the eyes of some of the minor characters of the film. It all starts out like your typical teen romance film, and while I easily found myself growing attached to these characters thanks to the performances given, I didn't have very high hopes for the film as a whole. However, once the carnage begins, you can definitely see where the horror part of the film comes in at... this film works perfectly in that regard. The first twenty minutes of the film feels like something you'd expect sixteen-year-old girls to be flocking to see on Friday nights, but after that, it turns into something straight out of a seventies grindhouse theater. I was expecting some blood and guts (after all, it is an 18+ zombie film), but I was honestly expecting something more along the lines of Scream in the gore department. No sir... the zombie carnage will make the gorehounds in the audience weep with joy, especially during one particular scene. I won't spoil it, but if you enjoyed the ultra-gory lawnmower scene in Dead Alive, you'll have fond memories of this scene for a long, long time.

Everything about this film is perfect, save for the length of things; I really wished that it could have gone on a bit longer. The acting is stellar, even from the British pop-star Samantha Mumba, the romance angle works out nicely (this coming from someone who hates romantic films, especially teen romances), and the horror is absolutely flawless. Lions Gate is currently sitting on the rights to the American distribution of this film, but all information about their plans for it is currently up in the air; it could go to theaters, it could be a direct-to-video release, it could be released this year, it could come out next year. Nothing is known at this point, but make sure that you see this film when it does finally get released here; it's well worth it. 9/10.