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I watched 2008′s Dance of the Dead, soon followed by 2005′s Boy Eats Girl and thought since they’re both teen zombie films, it would be a good idea to make this post a sort of “double feature” if you will. A compare and contrast of two movies with similar themes and ideas that at the same time are as different as can be form one another. I couldn’t say that either of these two films are very original, especially in the over abundant zombie market over the more recent years, but it is how each of these films are handled that makes them so opposite from each other.

I’ll go with a super tight (for me at least) synopsis of both films, then go over the weak and strong points, followed by some side by side of what works in one film and what doesn’t work in another.

Boy Eats Girl: Nathan (David Leon) is having major issues with getting together with his long time best friend and crush, Jessica (Samantha Mumba). Thinking she is “doing” some other dude, Nathan locks himself in his room and gets bombed leading to his accidental suicide (?). In an attempt to bring her son back from the dead; Nathans mother uses a stolen book of something or other to resurrect her deceased child. Of course, it doesn’t go right and Nathan is now an unofficial member of the living dead. Oh the horror. He slowly begins to show signs of infection and when confronted by a bully, Nathan attacks his antagonist turning him into a full on, flesh eating, zombie. Zombie bully=lots of peoples becoming zombies at a rapid pace and now with the help of some friends, Nathan must stop the epidemic while dealing with advancing zombie urges and his teenage love issues.

Directed by Stephen Bradley, this Irish zombie film is the more serious of the two movies, which is a surprise with a title riffing on a Ben Savage led teen television show. It’s not devoid of humor, just treads darker territory with Nathan contemplating suicide before it actually happens and then following Nathan through his slow change into a zombie. The idea of following a character through the slow zombie changing process has been done more than once and much better than how Boy Eats Girl handles the decline from human to flesh eater.

I thought some of the characters were okay and actually enjoyed most of the acting, especially David Leon’s performance as an unsure teen, going through the hard knocks of high school life and the even more difficult task of figuring out the almighty woman. But overall, I didn’t have much interest in what happened to anyone. Quite frankly, I barely care enough to even remember anything about any of them. I could partially blame that on nothing all that interesting happening in the film and most importantly, the zombie attack doesn’t even happen till the third act of the movie! Snooze.

The zombie scenes are pretty plain and lackluster to say the least, not a good thing when watching a zombie movie I might add. There were one or two very cool/fun things that happened, but they weren’t memorable or original enough for me to recall exactly what they were. Some of the (very little) zombie stuff was poorly shot and one scene in particular that would seem to be the films proverbial zombie money shot should have been very neat, but ultimately failed due to poor camera setup and editing. In the scene, one of the females uses some sort of big farming machine on a bunch of zombies, that because of the bad camerawork, I could barely even tell exactly what the contraption was, let alone see the zombie slaughter clearly enough to enjoy it.

Dance of the Dead: It’s prom night, as all the teens are getting ready to head out to their prom, a few nerdy (and dateless) ghost explorers unexpectedly run into zombies just as they begin to rise form the dead. Now it’s up to a group of losers and rejects to try to stop the zombie horde from making it to the prom and annihilating their entire senior class. The group is lead by class clown and rebel, Jimmy (Jared Kusnitz) who had ended up with no date due to his perfectionist girlfriend, Lindsey (Greyson Chadwick) breaking it off when she grew tired of his immature ways. Now, Jimmy finds himself having to rise to the occasion and show he isn’t just some jerk off kid by proving himself to his now ex-girlfriend and stopping the zombie invasion from getting to the prom and eating his classmates.

With Gregg Bishop behind the directing duties, Dance of the Dead looks slightly different from your average zombie film. I found Dance to be shoot and edited very similar to any one of those preteen/teen TV shows like Dawson’s or Degrassi (not that I would know or anything…). While I found it off putting at first, it soon became very clear that Dance is a sort of parody of those types of TV shows and as the first 10 minutes or so of the film went on, I found myself kinda getting into the teen drama found within the movie?!

While the characters are all very stereotypical of films set in high schools, it’s very clear that they’re meant to be and for the most part this is pulled off with everyone seemingly in on the joke. Couple of the stand out characters for me was school bully, Kyle played by Justin Welborn and Coach Keel as portrayed by Mark Oliver. Both characters are very different from one another, but both are badass and while not being original at all, are very fun to watch in the film…especially Kyle.

As for the zombie action, Dance of the Dead is very cool and gets going pretty quickly with the zombie attack. There is a few great zombie involved sequences that will have you cheering and while it’s getting difficult too find creative ways to kill the living dead, Dance has some great moments and zombie deaths that I hadn’t seen before. One of Dance’s best scenes by far is the zombie resurrection. I have always loved when zombies rise from the grave as it is visually very pleasing to the eyes, but the way it’s handled in Dance is way cool and something I hadn’t seen before. A few of the characters are running through a graveyard as zombies are launched from their graves, into the air, and literally hit the ground running right along with the frightened teens.

So, I think it should be clear that I liked Dance of the Dead as opposed to Boy Eats Girl. Even though I said that Boy Eats Girl is the more serious of the two films, it does have moments of attempted humor and I say attempted because the comedy doesn’t really work as opposed to Dance of the Dead, which pulls off being a solid horror comedy. Dance works as a film of this genre and it is more along the lines of Shaun of the Dead or even more so something like Return of the Living Dead. Maybe not quite as good as those two films in my opinion, but most definitely in the same ballpark. Dance could possibly be this generations equivalent of Return (which it takes a lot of cues from) and I say that from the eyes of a 32 year old dude that may not have any clue what them there kids, be liking these here days, so I could be wrong in that assumption.

Neither film is scary, but this reaction is more an attribute being put forth by Boy Eats Girl as opposed to Dance of the Dead. However, it was actually Dance that gave me the only jolt in either of the films and happened when the characters have their first zombie encounter. It was more of a jump scare, but it got me. Scary or not, I expect some undead action in my zombie films. I know I know, I’m being selfish, but to have to wait till the final act of a “zombie” movie (that’s also boring!) to actually have some real zombie action, is just bullshit to me and I hated that about Boy Eats Girl. Dance gets shit going at a nice pace and delivers on some great zombie moments that Boy Eats Girl did not. On top of the too little too late zombie stuff, at no time does any boy eat any girl…not even in a sexual way. Which actually would have been a smart and kinda funny play on the films title, but nope, nothing of the sort.

The biggest glaring difference between the two films is just how they are handled. I’ve already said numerous times that both films lack originality, but with Dance it’s meant to be this way as it is a zombie film that is also a parody of teen television, teenagers themselves and does all of this with success and a sense of care brought forth by the filmmakers. The stereotypical teens and situations in Boy Eats Girl are just that, stereotypical. Outside of the suicide elements, there is very little brought to the table by Boy Eats Girl and the film just feels flat and somewhat pointless in comparison to Dance.

I don’t really think Boy Eats Girl is a terrible movie by any stretch and I’m sure a few folks may find some joy in watching it. However (unlike She Devils on Wheels), I couldn’t even find enough good elements to give the movie the third Netflix star, relegating it too the sad and lonely world of two stars. I however really enjoyed Dance of the Dead and what it was attempting to do with its tongue in cheek comedic sensibilities. The best way to maybe compare these two zombie flicks is to take a look at the two films male leads and the journey their characters go through. Dances Jimmy is a jackass on the surface that finds himself having to step up and do what he can to keep him and his friends alive, along with proving to his ex that he can be more than just a class clown…kinda like beneath the surface of Dance of the Dead is a film successful in being more than your average zombie film with filmmakers that step up and try and make an actual good fun zombie film. Non-Girl Eating Nathan is a character that is trying to deal with the slow process of becoming a flesh-eating member of the living dead…where as Boy Eats Girls just deals with being a slow-paced zombie film with nothing really going for it in the living dead department.

So, yeah…unless you’re a zombie enthusiast, skip Boy Eats Girl and toss on a tux or a sky blue dress and check out Dance of the Dead. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky afterwards.