I needs a hug. And some puppies. And some psychotropic medication.
I think this is the most disturbing movie I’ve ever watched all the way through. I love horror films, but have a much harder time with ones that are based on the horror of what human beings are capable of doing to one another.
I’m thinking that, when our daughter is old enough to date and gets asked out, I’m going to make all her gentlemen callers watch deadgirl and then grill them on their responses. Anything other than “those awful boys should burn in hell”, and Maia’s girl will never see them again.
Anyone else here see it? What did you think? Especially, did you find the two main boys to be realistic? How typical or atypical would you describe them as compared to other adolescent boys?
BTW, I just want to say that I thought the film was very well done, overall. Writing, shooting, acting, directing, good stuff. Bad sound, but tolerable with subtitles.
This is the first I’ve heard of it, and from reading everything there is on IMDB and Amazon, seeing the trailer, and finding out that it’s online somewhere (Netflix or pirate, I don’t know), I have to say… I think I’d rather not.
I just watched the movie; I found it to be absolutely ridiculous and not very good. The characters were not at all believable. A handsome high school senior (from the looks of him, anyway), Ricky, whining and bitching about his lack of success with girls and pining away for a crush he had when he was, like, 12 years old. This guy would be THE best looking guy at any high school in the universe. He was not believable as a burnout and loser. The other guy, J.T., also whined and remarked that the “deadgirl” was “the only pussy he ever had any chance of getting,” and other such nonsense. He’s a handsome guy, cocky, confident, aggressive; bullshit he has to resort to fucking a dead (or undead) woman chained to a bed. It would have been one thing if he was just a flat sociopath who would fuck anything and everything with a pulse, immediately, without a second thought, like Hogg from Samuel Delany’s novel of the same name. But that’s not the kind of character T.J. was.
Also, it’s completely absurd to think that the guys who were in on this bizarre scheme to fuck the undead woman would spend so little time pondering the circumstances of it. She was locked in an an unused portion of an abandoned mental institution; she was obviously there for a while; she was able to survive being shot three times in the torso; obviously she can’t be killed. But none of the guys spent any time contemplating this fact. It would have been good if there was at least one scene where they really tried to figure it out, in depth. The two protagonists were nothing if not curious, so you’d think they’d try to make sense of their situation a little.
The jock characters were straight out of central casting, totally cliched and mindless, not to mention the older of the two jocks looked like he was about 35, not a high school student.
And the movie was…boring.
And it also pisses me off that they can make a film like this, but not make a movie adaptation of Hogg. America has the most bizarre and jumbled psychological ideas when it comes to sex and the depiction thereof. You can have a movie about guys beating, shooting, and raping a woman’s undead corpse, but you can’t have a movie about a gang of rapists-for-hire and their pet cocksucker, who piss on each other, eat turds, and revel in the gastronomical subtleties of dick-cheese? You’d have to be crazy to say that the latter is somehow objectively “worse” than the former.
Sorry for the confusion, and thanks, Snowboarder Bo, for linking to the correct film.
Also, thanks to Argent Towers for including some details about the film. I don’t know how to do a spoiler box, and since I don’t usually post in this forum, I wasn’t sure how much I should reveal out in the open.
Also, Argent, I found your post to be strangely reassuring. What was so horrific about the film to me is that these boys are presented as average high school guys, more or less, yet they engage in despicable behavior. I’m female, so I don’t know, really, how high school boys think. I watched this film and had to ask myself, how many boys think like this? So, for you to find this unbelievable is encouraging. A little. Still don’t think I’m ever gonna let my daughter date…
That didn’t bother me, because I’m used to beautiful people populating films and trying to play unattactive people. But I do have to say, from my own memory of high school (faded as it may be), that popularity had far less to do with what people actually looked like and far more to do with confidence and behavior. In my little band of misfits, one of my best friends actually looked a lot like the “hero” from the film. But he wasn’t viewed as popular, mainly because he was odd, artistic, and smart (and smart-mouthed). I thought he was gorgeous, but the cheerleaders didn’t.
See, here, you get to the crux of it. The character said this, but it smacked of self-justification and rationalization to me. He liked it because of the power it gave him. He had a fundamental problem (that I see in some real people) of calling rape “sex” when they are not the same thing.
I visited the forum in imdb.com for the film, and it’s a regular case study in gender and sexual issues. I don’t spend much time on those forums, though, because they’re not moderated so it’s pretty much land o the trolls. So I brought it here.
I wanted to hear from those who had seen it what they experienced from it. It seemed to me to be a very dark mirror held up to our gender and sexual issues (although I am well aware that my reaction to a film or other work of art doesn’t really tell me anything about what the filmmakers intended).
I saw it a while back and, well, I guess I hated it. There were a lot of walk outs, and rightly so. It was pure film student, though the cinematography was excellent and I wouldn’t mind seeing more horror with that look (was it even a horror? Half the time it felt like an after school special, the dialog was so unbearable). As for being average horny dudes, maybe I’m a cockeyed optimist, but I’d like to think that, upon discovering a naked female body that turns out to be alive, wouldn’t think to fuck it first, ask questions later. In fact, I barely remember them even trying to talk to the woman at all, just over her. And sorry, the movie didn’t work well enough for her to even be a metaphor.
A few people involved in the movie are friends of acquaintances and while they are perfectly lovely (physically and personality-wise) and talented, Deadgirl is not the movie that’s going to showcase their skills. In a way, it probably would have been more disturbing if it was a better movie all around – but it’s clear they have a lot of growing up to do.
ETA (but not really), I do think Maia’s Well is correct about definitions of beauty being totally out of whack in high school, though it’s the sort of thing you tend to notice later on while going through your yearbook or showing it to other people (‘Wait, he was supposed to be the hottest guy in the grade? Were you on drugs?’). So the two leads, however hot could have conceivably been seen as ugly outcasts, though perhaps it would have played better if they had been clearly physically unappealing.
Hogg is directly relevant to any kind of critique of this movie. I know it may seem like it’s getting ridiculous but since discovering this novel (which was recommended to me here on this board) I’ve found that there are a lot of discussions in which it’s actually applicable. It is the ultimate transgressive novel, is what it boils down to. And any work of cinema or literature which tries to push the boundaries of what is socially acceptable - as Deadgirl is - is going to get compared to Hogg, if I’m discussing it.
Transgressive fiction is such a small genre that any new arrival is going to be judged in the context of already-existing works. Of which Hogg is. I hope this makes it clearer.
They are not average high school guys. In any way. These guys are burnouts who occupy the lowest social level in the school. They both seem deeply disturbed and non-normal psychologically.
With that said, it was still very good acting. But I would have liked J.T.'s character a LOT more if he didn’t try to justify what he was doing in a whiny and annoying way.
You seem to really, really, really, really love that book. If you want a movie made about it, scrape up some damnd money and go make a movie about it, already. You can even play Hogg if you want. It seems to be your ambition.
Nah, I couldn’t play Hogg. But, I have thought about who could. I think the guy who plays “Sawyer” on Lost might be able to pull it off. He would have to gain a lot of weight, though. Not just fat, but also muscle. Hogg is supposed to be a real big, burly trucker, with a big gut but also a real solid build. Seth Rogen, at the time he was in The Forty Year Old Virgin, probably could have been a contender, but now he’s gotten way too skinny.
Anyway, as I explained above, this book is eminently relevant to any discussion about transgressive fiction. Of which this thread is one.
I’ve never read the book but how about Bostin Christopher from the movie Otis? He’s already played an unusual and creepy character and he has the build you described.
