GIRLS AGAINST BOYS

“Girls Against Boys” is a new indie horror flick that has been released straight to Dvd. The film stars Danielle Panabaker (Piranha 3DD, Friday the 13th) as Shae and Nicole LaLiberte (Kaboom and Dinner For Schmucks) as Lulu. Andrew Howard (I Spit On Your Grave) and Michael Stahl-David (Cloverfield) also have two smaller roles.

Shae (Panabaker) has had nothing but bad luck with all of her past relationships. She has been involved with Terry (Howard), who is married and has a daughter. Terry quickly dumps Shae in the hopes of a new start with his family. Shortly after being dumped, Shae meets Lulu (LaLiberte) who is very independent and definitely has a bad girl quality that Shae is drawn to. What occurs for the remainder of the film can only be described as a very poor excuse to exact revenge on the men these two women have been wronged by.

I like the poster for the film. It’s reminiscent of “I Spit On Your Grave” it’s what caught my eye in the first place. I thought the opening ten minute segment of the movie was very well done, but in hindsight it probably ruined any surprises later. We get absolutely nothing in the way of an introduction between Shae and Lulu. A conversation between the two at the bar they both work at, is all that is shown of them actually communicating. If they worked at the same bar surely they already knew of each other? They could have built the meeting and friendship up over time. Instead we get a piece of dialogue like “Is it a guy that’s got you down?” “Yeah” Okay friendship formed…. c’mon?

Moreover, there are endless scenes of Shae just walking around on the street looking dazed and confused. I am not sure what the point of that was? She had a break up it’s not like everything in her life was miserable? All of the apartment scenes that were shot were way to dark, it didn’t add any atmosphere to the situation because nothing was all that suspenseful anyway. The music throughout the film is blaring. Not only is it dance music in the clubs that is bursting through the mix but we get very ordinary music for the rest of the scenes too.

I can say that Danielle Panabaker did a solid job. She had the most emotional role to play and she did it well. Nicole was okay too but I do think she played it up a bit too much in several scenes. The direction the film goes is very one-dimensional, it borrows the same raw idea we have seen in other rape/revenge films. It was predictable that Shae was going to be assaulted. I will make mention of Michael Stahl-David I really enjoyed his work in “Cloverfield” and once again he was quiet menacing in his little role here. I can understand Shae wanting revenge, I think for David’s character, it’s even justified. However, to start killing off every other character for the sake of a body count is unforgivable. Did anybody else do anything that bad in the film? Anything that warranted them being killed? Probably not.

I understand they may have been depicting a slow descent into madness, but the motive is just stereotypical and a cop-out. The following is an example of some realistic dialogue (sarcasm). Shae says “I want to report a crime, I was sexually assaulted” the cop says “You look fine to me”. You have got to be kidding me? This is just baiting the audience into thinking all men are evil, kill them all. There isn’t a cop in all of America that would say that….. After all that happens there was still the opportunity to save face with some redeeming plot development and characters actions. Sadly these were never taken advantage of and by the end there isn’t anything redeemable about these characters. I commend the effort on some of the death scenes. I still think they could have been better considering this film had a solid budget.

As I was watching this is reminded me of another very poor film I saw a couple of years back. It was called “Descent” with Rosario Dawson in the lead role. It dealt with a similar subject matter, I think it worked slightly better because it was a psychological drama. It was not attempting to be a horror film. This is one you can probably pass on.

My rating for “Girls Against Boys” 4/10