GIRLS AGAINST BOYS (2012)

Girls Against Boys (2012)
Directed by: Austin Chick
Written by: Austin Chick
Starring: Danielle Panabaker, Matthew Rauch, Nicole LaLiberte

GIRLS AGAINST BOYS (2012)
Written and Directed by Austin Chick

Things go from bad to worse for Shae when, after her married lover dumps her to reunite with his estranged wife, she is raped by a guy she meets at a nightclub. With no-one taking her seriously, not even the police, work colleague Lulu comes to her aid and has just the solution to Shae’s problems: to kill those responsible for Shae’s unhappiness.

A couple of years ago, I reviewed 2014 film JULIA which shares similarities with horror thriller GIRLS AGAINST BOYS. Both feature a female character who is raped who then on goes to be befriended by a female who’s bloodlust for the male species knows no end. Much like that film, GIRLS AGAINST BOYS seems to be man-hating purely based on gender and the female characters reckon all men just see women as sexual objects they wish to claim whenever they feel like it, which is far from the truth. These aren’t the first films to deal with a revenge story like this. I Spit On Your Grave is a fine example of a woman wronged taking revenge on her attackers but in this movie we see the anger being taken out on the male race as a whole, not just those who’ve committed a crime against the lead character. Suddenly, the idea of revenge is out the window and the hunting of man seems to be purely for sport as a thrill to pass the time. Now, I’m all for strong women in films, where needed and warranted, but I just don’t get the male-bashing this film and similar film Julia seem to focus on. Instead of being an outright torture porn horror, focusing on how many different, inventive ways you can kill someone in order to frighten and gross out the viewer, the film has decided on pursuing the idea of killing men for fun as it’s main driving plot.

Outside its core idea of killing men for thrills, there’s very little else to this movie to warrant a watch. The script and characters are quite flat and even the murder scenes hardly show anything, hence the 15 certificate. Apart from Danielle Panabaker contemplating her life and choices she’s made as victim Shae and Nicole LaLiberte positively salivating at the thought of executing another male member of the species as her new best friend Lulu, GIRLS AGAINST BOYS is really dull. A few interesting uses of the camera try to inject some style into the movie but it fails to excite or be as slick as its contemporaries.

Despite having an ace up its sleeve, which is fairly evident after the final male kill, GIRLS AGAINST BOYS just lacks the storyline, character development and screenplay that it needs to captivate a viewer.

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