Boy Eats Girl (2005)

As lovely as she may be, it's weird to think that there was a time in which Samantha Mumba was being sold as some kind of worthy addition to a movie cast. I cannot even recall her musical hit(s), but I recall never thinking of her as being poised for a career in acting. But a small filmography proves me wrong. The quality of the movies there, well, that's a different matter entirely.

Boy Eats Girl isn't terrible. It's just a bit confused. Which is what you might expect from a zombie film that is also hitting all of the beats for a standard teen flick. It's still better than Warm Bodies, but that's not saying much.

Mumba plays Jessica, a young woman who has an admirer in the shape of Nathan (David Leon). But Nathan doesn't want to make a move, for fear of ruining their friendship. Despite the encouragement from his other mates, Diggs (Tadhg Murphy) and Henry (Laurence Kinlan). Much like so many other teen movies, you get a school bully (Samson, played by Mark Huberman), a gorgeous "rival" (Cheryl, played by Sara James), and a mother (played by Deirder O'Kane) who panics when she finds out that her son has accidentally suicided himself and tries to fix it with a book of mumbo jumbo sorcery that starts a zombie epidemic. That last part may not feature in many teen movies, but it's in this one.

There aren't many other titles in the filmography of director Stephen Bradley or writer Derek Landy that stand out. You might say that Boy Eats Girl is the biggest thing they've done, in terms of the cast involved and the exposure it had when first released. Which makes it easy to see why they've never really clawed themselves up to some higher level. There's enough here to make it a fairly enjoyable enough 80 minutes, as long as you're not too demanding or hard to please, but there's not enough here to make it stand out in any way. The comedy falls a bit flat, the zombie carnage is very tame, and the third act just leads to everything ending with a whimper, rather than a bang. What works, surprisingly, is the mix of characters. They may be a bundle of stereotypes, but they're all given enough individual moments to help them be more memorable than they otherwise would be, and the cast provide varying results.

Leon isn't a bad male lead - imagine if Andrew Lincoln made his debut as a strung-out goth - and Mumba is pretty and sweet enough to make the central potential pairing worthwhile. James, Huberman, O'Kane, and the likes of Bryan Murray and Lalor Roddy all do well in their supporting roles, but the main chuckles come from Murphy and Kinlan, the sidekicks who are willing to help their mate when able to break through their fear-induced paralysis.

A lot of people will absolutely hate this. It uses zombies in a way that zombie movie fans will dislike, it tries to coast along on a mix of small-time charm and youthful energy. But it almost works. Almost. It might have done a bit better if it didn't also feel designed to give Mumba a push that never really felt earned (as much as I don't actively dislike her).

4/10

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