Girls Against Boys
Director: Austin Chick
Writer: Austin Chick
Cast: Danielle Panabaker, Nicole LaLiberte, Liam Aiken, Andrew Howard
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
Shae (Danielle Panabaker) is a student who works at a bar at night. After her married-but-separated boyfriend Terry (Andrew Howard) breaks up with her and goes back to his wife, Shae decides to get distracted and goes out partying with her new colleague Lu (Nicole LaLiberte). But the partying ends in Shae getting raped. When she tells Lu about it, Lu first takes her to the police and when nothing comes of it there, she takes her on a revenge killing spree.

Neither the movie itself, nor its supposedly feminsit message convinced me. But at least it made me think about it.

Rape revenge flicks are always difficult, especially when made by a man. Way too often are they exploitative instead of empowering. And this movie’s feminist message did not blow me away. You can ask pointedly feminist question about the sexualization of female characters in the beginning all you want, when you then go on to continuously show your female characters in minis, hotpants, naked or sexualised poses, we’re in the same league of feminism as Sucker Punch, which is to say, not very feminist at all.

[SPOILERS]

But apart from the sexualisation of it all, the plot didn’t make much sense. So they want to kill the guy who raped Shae. Fine, I can get on board with that concept. But why would they kill the guys who have his address? If that was at least a way they are spiraling out of control, but no – they start with those murders.

And then that ending just throws out logic for the sake of a final twist. There are two ways to read this ending, where Lu shows up behind Shae after Shae killed her – either Lu and Shae were the same person all along, which seems to be implied by the first scene, where we can see Shae reflected in the mirror Lu walks past, but which makes no sense at all with the rest of the film (as we can clearly see Lu interacting with people at the same time as Shae) and basically renders the entire thing absurd. Or Shae starts imagining Lu as a source of strength after her death, but then what the hell was that mirror reflection thing?

But at least it was engaging enough that I considered whether it had some feminist worth before dismissing it.

Summarising: Nah.