BOY EATS GIRL

While helping renovate a local church, Mrs Maguire wanders into the basement and discovers an alluring book of voodoo spells.

Then we meet her son Nathan (David Leon, THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS), a good-looking if clumsy chap who has confided with his school friends that he fancies best friend and classmate Jessica (Samantha Mumba, THE TIME MACHINE). His mates urge him to ask her out, but he daren't.

Instead, Nathan spends his nights in his bedroom staring at photographs of his unrequited love. By day, he is busy fending off the attentions of the school slut Cheryl (PROOF).

All this changes though, when Nathan resolves to meet with Jessica one evening and reveal his true feelings for her. Alas, their tryst fails to materialize due to a succession of obstacles and Nathan is left thinking Jessica has hooked up with the school Romeo.

Distraught, Nathan returns home to drink himself stupid and hang himself. Seconds later his mother finds his body, and wastes no time in grabbing the voodoo book from her church - performing a spell and bringing her son back to life.

The good news is that Nathan's still alive and feels stronger than ever. He also has no recollection of his suicide. The bad news is the local priest visits Mrs Maguire to warn that the spell has an undesirable side-effect whereby the subject acquires a taste for human flesh ...

That night, Nathan attends the school disco and gets off with Cheryl in a bid to make Jessica jealous. However, this results in Cheryl's boyfriend Samson (Mark Huberman, STARFISH) chasing Nathan onto the football field to kick his arse. Nathan retaliates by biting a chunk from Samson's face - and so the zombie infection begins.

Can Nathan save the day and win Jessica's heart in the process? Will all of the pupils at his school be turned into ravenous flesh eaters? And will Nathan give in to his own cannibalistic cravings?

BOY EATS GIRL tries hard to be funny. From sight gags, to double-entendres and outright smut (writer Derek Landy seems to be preoccupied with blowjobs), it seems that no level of puerility is too low if it'll make us chuckle. The trouble is, BOY EATS GIRL is not as clever as it thinks it is. It's not funny. Silly, yes. Cocky, certainly. But not funny.

Furthermore, the characters are not likeable. This makes it difficult to engage with the flimsy storyline and impossible to care about who lives or dies. As for the acting, there's not much to write home about there either. It's largely a flat affair - with Tadhg Murphy (JELLYBABY) providing the only performance of note. Mumba wins the honours for the worst performance, being completely devoid of charisma or sexiness on screen.

The film's plot is simple and unoriginal, but even that loses steam after forty minutes or so, resorting to a final half made up almost exclusively of episodic scenes of people being chased and eaten. These scenes are admittedly quite gory and occasionally inventive, with some passable gooey FX work on offer.

But even those scenes, and the inclusion of a half-decent indie soundtrack, can't save BOY EATS GIRL from being a wet fart of a film.

On the plus side, the presentation of the film on this disc is very nice.

An anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer is clean, bright and sharp - proof that you can polish a turd. English audio is available in 2.0, and a rousing 5.1 mix.

The film can be accessed via 16 chapters.

Extras include a 9-minute making-of featurette entitled EATING OUT. This includes on set footage, plus interviews with cast and crew members, mainly discussing character motivations.

A 2-minute trailer makes the film look like much more fun than it is.

Finally, there's trailers for three superior films - DEAD MAN'S SHOES, SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE and WOLF CREEK.

BOY EATS GIRL was obviously made off the back of SHAUN OF THE DEAD's success. However it is nowhere near as clever or enjoyable. Drivel.

Review by Stuart Willis