Review of Girls Gone Dead (2012) by Eric P — 20 Jul 2013

Girls Gone Dead (Michael Hoffman and Aaron T. Wells, 2012).

I will give you this right up front: given the title Girls Gone Dead, if you go into this movie expecting something that looks like it came out of Yasujiro Ozu's camera, let's face it, you're dumber than this movie. I try to take things on their own merits, but even when you go into a movie expecting pulp cheesiness, there is good pulp cheesiness and bad pulp cheesiness. Interesting recent examples of the former? Strippers vs. Werewolves (and let's be honest, that's an even worse title than Girls Gone Dead), Gutterballs, and Zombies of Mass Destruction have all come out within the past five years, are all stupidly funny, and when you've finished with them, you may find yourself needing to take a shower, but you won't feel like you've wasted your time. Here, on the other hand... well, given how much I pay for Netflix and how many movies I watch per month, Girls Gone Dead probably cost me in the vicinity of seventeen cents to watch. I'm not going to demand my money back on this one (like I would on, say, Hellraiser: Revelations or Fading of the Cries), but it's a pretty close call.

Plot: the usual batch of young-and-beautifuls (a cheerleading team!) are on spring break at Rebecca (Step Up: Revolution's Katie Peterson)'s father's summer house. Which, it turns out, is a pretty fur piece from the actual beach, but the kids are not going to let that stop them from attempting to have fun partying it up at the local bar, which is terrifying and provides the movie's only true laughs. They also discover that Crazy Girls Unlimited, who are responsible for a very lucrative series of videos featuring topless drunk Spring Break babes (sound familiar?), are filming in close-by Daytona Beach...or were, until a crazed killer broke the party up in a very nasty way. The killer, his thirst for blood whetted, and the co-eds are on the inevitable collision course...

People have been trying to do slasher comedies as long as there have been slasher movies; Student Bodies popped up all the way back in 1981 (and it may still be the best of the lot). Almost all of them are unforgivably bad. And so, looked at in that light, maybe Girls Gone Dead isn't as bottom-of-the-barrel as I originally painted it. If you're familiar with enough movies of this stripe to be able to evaluate this one in the context it so desperately needs, you'll be able to see some of the movie for being as fun as it is. But is it really worth the trouble, given that you probably figured out who the killer is about five minutes after the character was introduced and there's nothing even remotely unpredictable about this flick? Probably not, but if you have absolutely nothing else to do on a Friday night... **.