GIRLS AGAINST BOYS Lacks The Grit The Material Calls For

College student Shae's (Danielle Panabaker) easygoing life is about to take a descent into hell. With her bags packed for a romantic Hamptons getaway, she's given the heave-ho by her older, married boyfriend (who could pass for Jason Statham's less buff, disheveled twin brother) in order for him to work things out with his wife and young daughter. Broken hearted, Shae heads to her bartending job. Pouring drinks for douche bags over pounding dance music brings more despair. During her break Shae dissolves into a sobbing mess in the break room.

Enter Lu, (Nicole Laliberte) a willowy ginger. Sensing Shae has man problems she offers a surefire way a night out of heavy drinking, dancing and debauchery to ward off the blues When the duo catch the eye of a trio of guys, they make their way back to one of the men's apartment. It's at this point where the booze and nausea kicks in, and Shae leaves to head home and sleep off a doozy of a hangover. When one of the men accompany her “to make sure she gets home safely” he expects more than a handshake and a fare thee well. Unwilling to take no for an answer, he rapes a fighting Shaw just outside the safe confines of her apartment.

Devastated by the attack, Shae finds no help forthcoming. The ex misreads her cry for help and nearly adds a second rape on top of the first. Her mother has no time to pull herself away from work to take her call. The police offer no assistance, brushing her off and taking her statement with an air of diffidence and no promises to pursue matters. Only Lu offers her support, taking Shae under her wing and the pair embark on a killing spree meant to exact vengeance on anyone that has wronged the young woman. It's a bit of Thelma and Louise for the horror crowd.

Austin Chick's Girls Against Boys is an odd duck of a film. In some respects it seeks to emulate the rape/revenge subgenre of I Spit On Your Grave or more appropriately here Ms. 45. Yet instead of the gritty vibe of an exploitation film, Chick has a more surreal, dreamlike quality to his work. It also desperately wants to be a message film, but only just scratches the surface with its “rape is bad” and “women are crazy” duel messages. The film looks like a million bucks and features a series of stunning visuals, but it lacks the courage to explore material in any meaningful way.

There's also odd storytelling choices as well. At the point where the film feels like everything has been wrapped up, things proceed for another fifteen minutes. Everything from the seeming end of the film until the credits roll feels cloaked in ambiguity. The coda gives the impression that the audience has just been Tyler Durden-ed. Events progress in a way that makes it feel like a significant amount of time has passed from the beginning to conclusion. Lu goes from casual work acquaintance to moving in and slipping into Single White Female mode with no setup. New romantic entanglements begin and end in chaos. Yet a passing comment from one of Shae's returning friends at the conclusion hints only a weekend has passed. It's either bad script writing or Chick is messing with the audience, planting seeds of doubt as to the veracity of everything leading to that point.

What the film offers is a study in contrasts between its leads. Nicole Laliberte is sultry, seductive and self-assured, acting the part of a film noir femme fatale updated for the emo generation. While Laliberte has a blast playing the role, and makes it impossible to take your eyes off her whenever she's on screen, it's all surface with no depth. Once you learn there's no underlying motive for her actions, that she simply likes to hurt people, it becomes too easy to write her off as a dime store sociopath. It's also the point where her character devolves into cartoonish levels of villainy, including one of the more awkward and head scratching exits in recent memory.

Of greater interest is Danielle Panabaker's Shae. Chick makes a curious decision to keep the audience from getting to know his lead before the assault. We know she's a heartbroken student, but Panabaker plays the part in such a quiet manner that it's difficult to get a read on her. Once the meat of the story kicks in Panabaker keeps up the detached tone despite being neck deep in escalating violence and carnage with bodies stacking at her feet like cord wood. She admits the killing spree doesn't bring any sense of closure, or much of any feeling at all. Compound her lack of emotion with the confounding last fifteen minutes and one leaves the film feeling Shaw is a very different sort of psychopath, one no longer capable of feeling emotions or empathy, or that she's suffered a break from reality and lives in a fantasy world of her own creation.

Girls Against Boys is an odd duck of a film. It takes on violent and controversial subject matter yet hesitates to explore it too deeply. It's a Women's Studies 101 take on the issue from someone looking for an easy course credit for sure. It contains a pair of strong lead performances despite the average material they're given to work with. If you read the premise-a pair of beautiful women seek out violent revenge on the men who wronged them-and expect a furious splatter fest that would play well during 42^nd Street's heyday-you'll come away disappointed. Large chunks of the Girls Against Boys doesn't works. I can't give it a strong recommend, yet there's enough within to warrant a watch via Netflix or cable.

GIRLS AGAINST BOYS is now available via iTunes and other VOD outlets.