TIFF Review: Deadgirl

I am completely torn on Deadgirl. This is one movie that plays very well with a Midnight Madness crowd but at any other time it will not. While watching it I couldn’t help but be reminded of last year’s movie Blood Car, which I saw at Toronto After Dark. Both movies push buttons and have a good sense of humour. I have since watched Blood Car a few times and I get a kick out of it each time. I just can’t see that happening with Deadgirl. It relies too much on jump scares when it wants to be scary while Blood Car really makes no attempt to truly scare you.

In Deadgirl, two high school friends JT and Rickie discover the body of a chained naked woman in the basement of an old asylum. In stead of releasing the nearly comatose woman JT decides that they should “keep her” and use her as a sex slave. Rickie doesn’t want anything to do with this and leaves. The next day JT grabs his friend tells him that he has to see something. After some coaxing Rickie goes along and JT tells him how he had to beat her when she tried to bite him. A fight between the two friends ensues and JT ends up shooting the woman. The audience and Rickie discover that the woman can’t be killed.

The rest of the movie is all about the secret getting out as more and more people are brought down to the basement and also on Rickie’s crush on his childhood sweet heart who of course is in dating the obnoxious jock. The humour is pretty dark and was fun but I spent the rest of the movie not enjoying the story. The Midnight Madness audience definitely enjoyed themselves but there is nothing in Deadgirl that makes me want to revisit it and without the large festival crowd it will not play well.