Girls Against Boys (2012)

Shae (Danielle Panabaker) is a student who studies male fantasies and how they view women as objects. She is hurt by an older male boyfriend who patches things up with his separated wife for the sake of his three year old daughter. Distraught, Shae is taken under the wing of a somewhat psychotic Lulu or Lu (Nicole LaLiberte) a woman straight out of a Billy Joel song..."She can carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleeding."

On the rebound, she goes out with Lu and gets involved in a situation where "No" doesn't carry any meaning. With the aid of Lulu, they go on a killing spree, after which you wonder where this movie will go. Unlike so many films in this genre, it smartly brings it home.

The film brought to mind "Shame" and "Compliance" two recent films sold as being "disturbing and thought provoking" which are nothing more than perv films. This one is the opposite. It is sold as a perv film, but is really more thought provoking as it looks into psyche of sexes and the way they view each other and what women would do if they could get away with it.

This film ignores plot continuity points such as body disposal, clean up, or the police investigating the homicides. This is a theme driven film, not plot driven.

This is a soft 5 star rating. Most people won't like it. I enjoyed the small clever aspects of this film. The slow motion scene of the smoke leaving the gun, or the young girl riding by with vampire teeth as a way to say, "what roles are we subconsciously teaching our children." The policeman with the straw irritatingly sipping from a cup. Lu speaking at the Tarantino restaurant "explaining" the film theme. At the end there is a small insert of Lulu smoking a cigarette that brought the film home. Bravo Austin Chick for making a feminist slasher film into a subliminal art work. I appreciate what you did.

Parental Guide: F-bomb, off screen rape, sexual scenes, nudity (Nicole LaLiberte)

the movie has a very unusual point of view for saying that women can be dangerous if you don't respect them...what you will find during the plot is how a typical woman can suddenly change into a cold blooded murderer....it's enjoyable if you happen to be a fan of SAW movies...

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A female empowerment revenge film made by a man? Hmmmm... I don't think a female director would have made her shorts so short. It was decent but hard to describe in a few sentences. I recommend it to fans of the extreme (e.g., Hostel or Sawmovies).

Our male writer/director (Austin Chick) piles the female oppression on pretty hard. We first find Shae(Danielle Panabaker) in some sort of feminist women's studies class talking to her classmate about her married boyfriend who's about 15+ years her senior. After he breaks things off she feels lost without her unhealthy relationship as she fends off unwelcome advances at work (as a night club bartender) and sneaks off to cry about the loss of this loser. As if she didn't already have a big enough deficit of self worth, Shae is always dressed in very short shorts or snug tiny skirts.

Lu (Nicole LaLiberte) works at the same bar, but she handles her shallow clientele with more assertiveness; she won't be bullied or taken advantage of by men. She wants to help Shae feel better so they go out for a night of drinks and dancing. But when one thing leads to another, Shae finds herself alone with a man in a situation where "no" has little weight. As if that wasn't bad enough--and ALL of this has happened in just one day so far--Shae's day gets much worse with! After that which would undeniably be considered the worst day of her life, she can't even report the multiple assailants without being called "sweetheart" by a dismissively skeptical cop who says "you look fine to me."

Yeah, laying it on a little thick, huh?

Nicole LaLiberte does a solid job as the vengeful, sociopathic and sultry Lu. She kills a man in a cringingly brutal manner and just looks him in the eye, watching as he dies. She plans murders with the same calm deadpan demeanor one would have while reading the nutrition information off of a Captain Crunch cereal box. The yin to Lu's yang, Shae is clearly the shy one, but she's along for the ride willingly and finds her murderous footing quickly. The two of them embrace their vengeful actions--not as righteous, but simply "right" as if they had no other cares or sense of consequence in the world.

They have some funny moments. The delivery of their homicidal discussions provides a great dark comedy appeal in a few scenes. The gore element is present and there's even a brief dash of torture, but it's not celebrated as it is in the Hostel movies. We still get gummy detoothed mouths, some dismemberment, and exit wound splatters, though.

The female empowerment is often credible, but at times, a bit over the top. For example, Lu physically handles herself way too well for someone who's probably never lifted anything heavier than a 6-pack and is a crackshot with a handgun and we have no reason to find that credible. However, anyone who watches this movie wants to see brutal and clever death scenes and likely wouldn't be too troubled with this shortcoming.

On the topics of female empowerment and death scenes, that's all we see. Unlike crime thrillers, this movie does not alternate between the killers' agenda and the police detectives tasked with the investigation of their bloody wake, there are no chase scenes and our "protagonist" murderesses make no effort to evade their pursuers (which we have no knowledge of, if they exist) or to cover their tracks or wipe their fingerprints from the crime scene. No. This movie is about two girls avenging how they've been wronged.

This was a female empowerment revenge film made by a man. It wasn't bad. But...hmmmm...I don't think a female director would have made Panabaker's shorts so short or LaLiberte's lesbian-driven nudity soooooo, well--naked. LOL.

It's still a fun romp, though.

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Girls Against Boys was a Clever film that from the trailer leads you to believe it's another "I Spit On Your Grave" or "Last House on The Left",it even co stars Andrew Howard who plays the Sheriff in "I Spit On Your Grave" but what we get is much smarter and will not be as satisfying to the hard core slasher fan.

This film is more thought provoking and has less gore. Although there are some moments that are pretty hard core most of the brutalizing is done off camera and left to your imagination which at times can be more effective.Myself, I prefer to see the gore as I am an avid slasher fan. Even so I was not disappointed in this film and found it to be very entertaining.

Throughout the film I kept thinking where is this really going? It's plays quite ambiguously,I got this feeling from act one in a scene where Nicole LaLiberte who plays Lu glanced in a bathroom mirror but even with that it didn't end up where I thought it would which I believe is a good thing,I hate for a film to be predictable.

Again, much of it is subjective but effective all the same.The stand out actor in my opinion was Nicole LaLiberte who was excellent as Lu a true sociopath in every sense of the word.

Her Samurai costume was very effective as was Danielle Panabaker's mouse costume which played out in the third act,Oh the Irony in that.

I would recommend this to anyone who want's to see a smart film with a few bits of effective gore.I would not recommend it to the stalk and slash set.

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great movie panabaker kicked ass and her friend to the movie played great no scratches on the disk grat movie everyone should buy this movie

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