Boy Eats Girl is set in an Irish town where a woman named Grace (Deirdre O'Kane) renovating a Church finds a hidden crypt & some ancient Pagan books on Voodoo rituals including the resurrection of the dead, initially the find doesn't seem significant but comes in very handy after her teenage son Nathan (David Leon) accidentally kills himself while drunk. Nathan is brought back to life unfortunately the process has the unwanted side effect of those brought back to life craving human flesh & those who are bitten also become flesh eating zombies, can Nathan sort the mess out he has started & end up with his childhood sweetheart Jessica (Samantha Mumba) before the entire town are turned into zombies?
This Irish English co-production was directed by Stephen Bradley & is a sort of Zom Rom Com mixture of Dawn of the Dead (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004) & maybe a touch of Casablanca (1942) which works better than it sounds overall but isn't anything outstanding. I do have to say that I love the title Boy Eats Girl, it's a clever pun & play on words that any cheap low rent Newspaper headline writer would be proud of! The script by Derek Landy isn't as much an out-and-out comedy as Shaun of the Dead was since most of it's comedic moments are one-liners or people reacting in silly ways to certain situations they find themselves in like someone taking an umbrella out of a golf bag to protect himself by accident rather than a golf club like his friends, the romance element is alright but a little corny while the horror aspects are OK with some decent blood & gore although it's not an overly dark film. I didn't like the clunky & contrived way Nathan is killed & then brought back to life, it sort of feels like the makers came up with the clever title & then came up with a story to fit it using various awkward ideas. I'm not too happy about the happy ending either where the hero gets the girl, the bad guy is killed & a cure for being a zombie is rather luckily found by complete accident. The film moves along at a reasonable pace with the last twenty minutes or so providing a fair amount of zombie action & it's not a boring film by any stretch of the imagination but not that much really happens when you think about it.
Director Bradley does OK, it's odd to see a film set in Ireland let alone a horror film with flesh eating zombies. The Irish accents may put some off which is fair enough because I found them a tad irritating on more than one occasion, it's well made but doesn't really have much style. The special effects are actually pretty impressive & the zombies are of the fast moving type rather than the slow shuffling variety. There's a fair amount of gore here especially at the end, there are a few bites, some splashed blood, a gory ripped-off head, some intestine eating, a high heel stuck in a zombie's eye & a cool sequence where a pack of zombie's are sliced up with a wood chipper with guts, heads & severed limbs flying all over the place.
According to the IMDb this had a budget of about $5,000,000 which sounds like a huge amount considering what ended up on screen, there's no big name stars, only one sequence with any real special gore effects & no big action scenes or set-pieces. Shot in Dublin in Ireland. The acting is alright but rather predictably Samantha Mumba who is better known as a pop singer is terrible & you know your in trouble when she's the 'name' in it.
Boy Eats Girl has a wonderfully amusing title, unfortunately the film isn't anywhere nears as imaginative, funny or clever & it's as simple & straight forward as that. It's worth a watch if you like horror comedies but isn't anything brilliant whichever way you look at it. Good but not great.
This Irish English co-production was directed by Stephen Bradley & is a sort of Zom Rom Com mixture of Dawn of the Dead (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004) & maybe a touch of Casablanca (1942) which works better than it sounds overall but isn't anything outstanding. I do have to say that I love the title Boy Eats Girl, it's a clever pun & play on words that any cheap low rent Newspaper headline writer would be proud of! The script by Derek Landy isn't as much an out-and-out comedy as Shaun of the Dead was since most of it's comedic moments are one-liners or people reacting in silly ways to certain situations they find themselves in like someone taking an umbrella out of a golf bag to protect himself by accident rather than a golf club like his friends, the romance element is alright but a little corny while the horror aspects are OK with some decent blood & gore although it's not an overly dark film. I didn't like the clunky & contrived way Nathan is killed & then brought back to life, it sort of feels like the makers came up with the clever title & then came up with a story to fit it using various awkward ideas. I'm not too happy about the happy ending either where the hero gets the girl, the bad guy is killed & a cure for being a zombie is rather luckily found by complete accident. The film moves along at a reasonable pace with the last twenty minutes or so providing a fair amount of zombie action & it's not a boring film by any stretch of the imagination but not that much really happens when you think about it.
Director Bradley does OK, it's odd to see a film set in Ireland let alone a horror film with flesh eating zombies. The Irish accents may put some off which is fair enough because I found them a tad irritating on more than one occasion, it's well made but doesn't really have much style. The special effects are actually pretty impressive & the zombies are of the fast moving type rather than the slow shuffling variety. There's a fair amount of gore here especially at the end, there are a few bites, some splashed blood, a gory ripped-off head, some intestine eating, a high heel stuck in a zombie's eye & a cool sequence where a pack of zombie's are sliced up with a wood chipper with guts, heads & severed limbs flying all over the place.
According to the IMDb this had a budget of about $5,000,000 which sounds like a huge amount considering what ended up on screen, there's no big name stars, only one sequence with any real special gore effects & no big action scenes or set-pieces. Shot in Dublin in Ireland. The acting is alright but rather predictably Samantha Mumba who is better known as a pop singer is terrible & you know your in trouble when she's the 'name' in it.
Boy Eats Girl has a wonderfully amusing title, unfortunately the film isn't anywhere nears as imaginative, funny or clever & it's as simple & straight forward as that. It's worth a watch if you like horror comedies but isn't anything brilliant whichever way you look at it. Good but not great.