Boy Eats Girl

Boy Eats Girl is an attempt to make a comic American-style teen schlocker zombie movie in Ireland. Why, when they do it already in America, and even there with decidedly mixed results? The English took on the genre to good effect with Shaun of the Dead, and succeeded largely because they played with the cultural incongruities thrown up when plain ordinary lads and lasses found themselves having to cope with zombies much as if it were a scheduling problem with the trains. The kind of attitude that gets you to dig deep, think of Churchill and have half a lager with your mates when it's all over. By contrast Boy Eats Girl takes place in the suburbs of nowhere specific, centered on Huntstown School where the kids are lining each other up for the end of term disco. There are, as the genre demands, glamourous mean girls, jocks and misfits. Once these are established the action commences when misfit Nathan (Leon) has a fatal accident at home and his mammy (O'Kane) manages to reanimate him using a book she had found, somewhat improbably, in the local church. Nathan feels rotten hungry and, by biting the head jock, spreads the zombie mayhem through the locality. Unfortunately the film doesn't ever make the zombie threat seem real and therefore there's nothing to play the comedy off. And, in a week when Land of the Dead is also opening, this weakness is going to be all too apparent. Maybe Boy Eats Mammy might be a better idea for an Irish zombie flick.