Pleasures of the Guilty Dead: Dead Girls

By Keri O’Shea

I’ve mentioned the minor anthology movie comeback on the site before; whether the genre has gone through something of a spike on the indie scene thanks to the notoriety of the recent V/H/S films (which I’ve still yet to see) or whether it’s just one of those things, a style that’s just come around again, I’m still glad that it’s happening. It’s a neat format which potentially allows different directors and writers to collaborate on at best a brilliant compendium, and even at worst a curiosity, because after all if you find a chapter you don’t like, it’s not going to last for the whole of the film. There’s a lot of room for play in how the film gets framed too: Dead Girls, a brand-new anthology movie, refracts its own three chapters through a uniquely female perspective, making all of the key protagonists women. Zero budget or not, the results are surprisingly bold and ambitious.

It’s evident from the get-go that the writers involved here know their horror and are happy to play around with things viewers might expect, because the initial set-up is a clear nod to a horror trope. We start with a screaming woman, fleeing into the middle of nowhere to escape her male, armed pursuer. So far, so familiar. Similarly she spots a house up ahead and makes her way there, finding the door unlocked – which she quickly locks behind her, taking a moment to feel safer before she begins to hear indistinct voices coming from upstairs. She goes to investigate…and from here, we leave one story and segue into the first of three chapters, this one being Over My Dead Body.

Over My Dead Body places us in an unhappy house party: girlfriend Suzy (Aubrey Joyce Tunnell) is far from pleased with her boyfriend Travis’s conduct. Seems he’s been flirting with another lady, with very few fucks given whether Suzy sees it, reacts to it, or anything of the sort. Suzy goes off on her own and wanders by a room where a tattooist is offering his services; she asks him if he can give her a tattoo which encapsulates the message, ‘Don’t fuck with me’. He says he can – though it evidently doesn’t work too well, at first at least, as it seems she hasn’t seen the last of Travis…or he of her. What follows is a Tales From The Crypt style story of wronged women and vengeance. There are of course limitations on what can be shown on screen when budget and so on is taken into account, but this segment manages a nice amount of atmosphere, whilst keeping that overblown, dark-cartoonish vibe.

Next up, we go far further into that dark cartoonish vibe, adding a dash of what feels in a few ways like 80s horror with a schlocky, grisly sideways swipe at frat/sorority culture in Theta Phi’s Never Die. Ah, the sorority house: an aspect of American culture which seems enough of a horror all on its own to this outsider, but some girls seem to want to be part of these establishments – as is the case with friends Courtney (Ali Hadley) and Avery (Mia Doran), whom we meet on their way to a pledge night at one of their campus’s most desirable houses. They get lucky – if you can call it that – and get invited to stage two, the initiation, with mousey, unworldly Avery singled out for special honours. Uh-oh. Well, she impresses the girls alright – in her own way. Theta Phi’s Never Die is very entertaining and has a few twists too; it kept me engaged throughout, and I liked how it interwove the smallest dash of disdain for this type of culture into an otherwise fairly light-touch horror yarn.

Last up is Vengeance is Mine, a story which plays with the ‘fallen woman’ idea. Maggie (Kelsey Sante) is a former Catholic ward who has wound up on the streets, turning tricks in the hope that one day she can escape her past – but one more encounter with her former benefactor turns particularly nasty one night, and she decides to take action against the people who let her down. Now, of all the stories here, I thought that some of the subject matter in this one sat a tad uncomfortably with the format. Sure, all three of the stories reference sex and violence, but I didn’t feel that some of the heavy topics (including abuse of a minor) could rightly be given an anthology treatment very easily. It also suffers a little by being the last story, but using the same modus operandi of those tales which came before. Still, I did like how the occult came gradually to play a part, albeit an ambiguous one, in the proceedings.

Through all of this, the frame – the house and its occupant – not only doesn’t go away, but plays a role in each of the tales, and I do think this is something to be commended. It shows that director/writer Neal Fischer and those who co-wrote with him here have some much-needed confidence in working with the film’s structure, adding some pause for thought and sophistication as the stories play out. It’s this sort of willingness to do a little more with a little less that can supercede budgetary restraints – and it be fair, it is clear that Dead Girls was made on very little cash. It has ideas, though, and that’s something that money alone can’t buy. That said, I think the film would be stronger without the (admittedly minor) voiceover which creeps in, because I thought that the film worked better with the mystery of the framework fully maintained.

Still, what we have here is a bold idea and a novel framework, a plot where wronged women call the shots (and hints of wicked magic move things along). I can live with a few quibbles on style for the sake of the good stuff. If you have a place in your heart for indie movies which are willing to try something new, then Dead Girls is a dark, quirky collection of horror tales with a twist.