In a parallel universe, where a vacationing John Hughes (the definitive chronicler of '80s youth who needs no introduction) happened upon the set of Pier Paolo Pasolini's legendary endurance test "Salo: or the 120 Days of Sodom," the director of such light-yet-crushingly-truthful fare as "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club" might have steered his sensibilities toward a script like "Deadgirl." Many of the core Hughes facets remain intact in this tale of two high-school buddies (Shiloh Fernandez and Noah Segan): one seeking the company of a long-lost crush; the other looking to get laid, and both paradoxically fascinated and repulsed by notions of their own sexuality. The script, by Troma veteran Trent Haaga, is brutally frank and unapologetically profane when it comes to teenage male notions of the opposite sex and all that women entail; when our duo, in the midst of trashing an abandoned mental hospital, stumble upon a nude woman chained to rusted basement piping, their sexual awakening becomes a descent into almost unbearable horror. Directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel parallel the permanent blue skies of above-ground suburban facades with the subterranean darkness of the asylum that, symbolically, becomes an oppressive metaphor for the eroding sanity of our conflicted characters. There is a queasy realism to the performances that lends "Deadgirl" much of its wrenching power: to be a teenager (that frustrating dead zone between "child" and "adult") in a circumstance as extraordinary as being able to perform any violent or sexually deviant act on a prone woman (who carries a fatal plague in her bite) invites the shattering of subtlety for a full-bore push through taboo after taboo. In many ways, the film is a semi-supernatural (the origin and species of the titular female is never explained) companion piece to Meir Zarchi's feminist revenge classic, "I Spit On Your Grave," wherein misogyny was deconstructed in a confrontational, punishing way that dared us to look away from the horrors unfolding on-screen. "Deadgirl" carries the same power -- a haunting and thought-provoking film that dives into hell face-first and doesn't look back.
Review of Deadgirl
