Review of Boy Eats Girl

All in all, this is reasonably engaging stuff, an amusing enough Irish spin on modern zombie fare, partly a romantic drama as well. It clearly aspires to be like "Shaun of the Dead", with a level of gore akin to that of Peter Jackson's "Braindead". It's not in the same league as those other films, but it's likable, has some good laughs, and definitely delivers in the violence department. David Leon stars as Nathan, a guy secretly in love with his friend Jessica (Samantha Mumba). Depressed after seeing what he is thinks is Jessica getting with another guy, he's playing around with a noose and accidentally gets killed by his mom, who's already learned how to resurrect the dead thanks to some standard issue ancient artifacts she's found. Trouble is, she didn't know how to prevent the resurrection from turning her son into a zombie. David chows down on a grumpy bully, who in turns creates more zombies who keep the cycle going. So David, who's trying to suppress his newfound hunger for human flesh, teams up with his friends to try to save the day. Now, "Boy Eats Girl" is rather slow to get going, as it builds up the romantic portion of its plot, but it does at least feature genuinely amiable characters. The young actors do the best at getting into the spirit of this thing, with Nathan's friends Diggs (Tadhg Murphy) and Henry (Laurence Kinlan) tending to steal the show. Singer Mumba looks great, but despite being top billed basically plays second fiddle to the guys - until she kicks a ton of zombie ass with some handy farm machinery. This is a true highlight as the movie kicks into gear, and things get pretty exciting and darkly funny. The movie refrains from ever getting bogged down in exposition, so that's one good thing. The wrap-up isn't totally satisfying (whatever happened to the mom?), and this doesn't add up to much when it's all over, but it's still easy enough to watch, and zombie movie lovers should be pleased with the amount of brutality on display. Six out of 10.