Thanks

While most people will experience Deadgirl in 2009, this was the year that will always mean the most to us. It was the year we finished the film, and the one during which we finally got to share it. Thanks to everyone who came to see it and especially to those who stuck around afterwards to talk. Ever since we premiered in Toronto, we've used this blog to quote or link to some reactions, mostly focusing on the larger news and film sites. But since the most satisfying part of the past few months has been the post-screening conversations in late night theater lobbies, we wanted to take a few minutes and thank everyone who saw the film, especially those who felt enough to actually share a few thoughts online. There has been no standard response to Deadgirl. That, in of itself, has been pretty exciting to experience. So in honor of all of you who showed up, either because of what you'd heard or despite it, here's a sampling of your responses:

Santa Barbara City College review.
Luke Thompson, at last.
A Sitges round-up enjoys the movie.
The Plurp. The Review.
The Future of Cult.
7.5 out of 10.
Who's sicker?
The first real gem of the festival.
Thanatos, Sadism, and Possession.

Click here for the web version.

Tonight is the last of our three Stockholm screenings. We're anxious to here how they went so if you were there, let us know.

Ticket info here.

Deadgirl, a childrens' fantasy

Not sure what this site is, but if you come across it looking for information about Deadgirl, be warned; their synopsis is just a slight bit misleading: "Catweazle is a magician from the time of the Normans who is cast into the future by magic. With the help of two boys he uses magic in an attempt to return to his own time."

I am tearing up.

Head over to Deadgirl screenwriter Trent Haaga's blog (click here) for what he's calling – and he might be right – "Best. Deadgirl. Review. Ever."

This week's screenings

Cucalorus Film Festival, Friday, Midnight
Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts, Wilmington, NC
Buy tickets

Leeds International Film Festival, Saturday, Midnight
Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds, UK
Buy tickets

Lone Star International Film Festival, Saturday, Midnight
312 Houston Street, Fort Worth, TX
Buy tickets

Audacious!

The Hollywood Reporter begins by calling Deadgirl "an audacious, perverse shocker" and finishes with "this unsavory adolescent fantasy gone wrong proves difficult to dismiss."

Best part is it got picked up by Reuters, and then by a bunch of other sites – so here's the Yahoo link to the entire review.

Deadgirl is featured in this AFI Daily News article, which spotlights documentary aesthetics in feature films. Honestly, it seems like a little bit of a stretch to include us in the piece, but at the same time it's always nice to be included and Marc Lee is clearly a fan. He wanted to fit us in and it's great that he managed to.

Thanks

We just wanted to thank everyone who came out to our incredible AFI screenings. (And an extra little thanks to Quam and Chris over at Reserve Result for the polaroid of us and Deadgirl-star Noah Segan).

"Deadgirl will sometimes remind you of the best of Cronenberg. Cleverly written, stylishly directed and morbidly fascinating. It isn't your average cookie cutter horror film... Deadgirl gets it just right." - Film Threat

San Sebastian Sneak

There was another surprise one-night-only screening of Deadgirl the other night in San Sebastian, Spain. Again, thanks to Google translator...

From Cementerio de Historias:
" The last film of the day, and surprise of the night was Deadgirl. A film about teenagers who find a woman chained zombie in a madhouse, and decide to use abandoned as a sex slave... but "Deadgirl" is more than that, its development approach and the dramatic situation of living actors make the movie... Intense, dirty, dramatic and even funny, this film keeps the suspense at all times thanks to a very neat picture, an assembly and intelligent direction, and a soundtrack that portrays the grisly sadism perfection of situations.

From Semana de Terror:
"But the best of the night was undoubtedly the film surprise. DeadGirl is a discovery. Has much merit to keep the viewer's attention after so many hours of movies.

Death March

AFI kicked off last night with Deadgirl's stroll down the red carpet. See links below for a few shots of our beautiful cast. (Somehow, directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel seem to have been accidentally cropped out)

MSNBC, Yahoo, Zimbio

AFI Preview at AICN

"ALT_Cinema is the name of the programming section where some of the harder-to-define films are playing this year, and it doesn’t surprise me to see DEADGIRL scheduled there. I’ll have a full review for this one soon, but the short version is it’s RIVER’S EDGE with a disgusting supernatural twist ... [but] the film manages to be more stylish and emotionally affecting than its “too-sick-to-be-believed” reputation would indicate."

Win tickets to Deadgirl

Twitch is giving out a few tickets to next monday's AFI screening of Deadgirl. Click here to find out how to win.

Halloween surprise

Like slipping the proverbial razorblade in an apple, the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival has just added Deadgirl as its surprise Halloween screening. It's playing at 10:15PM, this Friday, and you can buy tickets here.

We're very curious how the Florida crowd will react. Since we have our own Los Angeles premiere that very same night, please let us know how it goes if you happen to make it over.

Surprise in Sitges

"At the world’s leading festival for fantastic cinema... THE BEST SURPRISE: Deadgirl, which turns a River’s Edge-type scenario into a creepy adolescent freak-out. The miles-wide eyeballs of viewers exiting the theater, shaking their heads, testified to that fact." – Paste Magazine

Best Screenplay

Deadgirl news from Down Under: the movie picked up another award this week with Best Screenplay at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, presented by Grolsch beer (!). Pop one open and toast Trent Haaga.

Someone tell Hernan Migoya

Another review, straight outta Sitges, by way of Google Translate:

"Deadgirl is a wonderful example of how the big stories are recycled, as the symbols are mixed resulting in exciting experiments generics. In the field of popular culture, myths are expanding, fly too high or are impregnated mud, but we can never appreciate them in their original purity. Deadgirl begins as a novel by Jack Ketchum, continues as one of Stephen King, and ends like a fairy tale where there is a hero with a machete, a princess, a dragon, a villain, his lackey and the dungeon their host. And by the way mutates, tilts between horror and humor adolescent: from a love story näif the chronicle of a friendly that evaporates; of the class struggle in a high school in the Midwest to be an essay on objectification of the body, or even could be defined as the total demystification of an archetype of the genre, which is sodomized. Deadgirl wants to be many things, maybe too much, but goes flying colors because it is narrated with conviction, with a lot of bad milk and believing in what is counted... the result is brilliant ... someone tell Hernan Migoya." - Miradas de Cine

The audiences in Sitges seemed to really go for the film. While this has resulted in what seems like a lot of enthusiastic blogging, we don't read Catalan and have had to turn to online automatic translators...

...the stimulant, hypnotic, minimalist and certainly unhealthy (but directly sick) Deadgirl, Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, a chilling psychopathological incursion into the most obnoxious ghosts associated with youth sex, gender difference and growth. A small jewel (sadistic necrophiliac that leaves most of the alleged scandalous tapes of the contest almost to the height of any Disney product).

and: "The directors achieve this mix of show death and sex from a completely original."

and also: "Deadgirl ventured into the deviations of torture with a teenage movie that endorses the wake of Saw and Hostel while maintaining a substantive inherited both chronic teenage John Hughes and the recent Juno...Extremely gore and deemed as one of horror films the most daring and clever we saw long Deadgirl squatter festivals and do not delay to redo about him."

Deadgirl will be making its West Coast / Los Angeles Premiere at the AFI Fest. Our screening times are:

Friday, October 31st at 7:15pm
Monday, November 3rd at 12:15pm
(Both screenings are at Arclight Hollywood)

Click here to buy tickets.

Trent talks some more

Deadgirl-screenwriter Trent Haaga once put a gun to Edward Furlong's head. More recently, he was interviewed by Twitch. You can read that interview by clicking here.

Deadgirl Sitges Screenings

Fri 10/4 at 11:00pm (Casino Prado)
Sat 10/5 at 10:40pm (Sala Tramuntana)

Deadgirl is screening in the 'New Visions' section of the festival.

Click here to buy tickets.

JT speaks

"Did you wish that just once you had control, a little right to something, the right to be the boss? DEADGIRL put me in the position to answer those questions I've been asking since I was 13. These are real feelings in a surreal world and it helped me a lot..."

Click here to read an interview with Noah Segan, one of the stars of Deadgirl.

Spoiler Alert

io9, the brilliant site for all things sci-fi, posted an interesting essay today inspired by Deadgirl. If you're avoiding spoilers, do not click, as there's a big one right off the bat. Deadgirl is "symbolic enough to provide social commentary, but grody enough to keep you entertained." Read the whole piece here.

"Award-Winning"

We just got back to town from an amazing few days in Austin for Fantastic Fest, where we nabbed two awards. We won Second Place (Tokyo Gore Police, from Japan, took the top honor) – so as I like to say, we won "Best American Movie." We'll write about the second award soon enough. Frankly, we're exhausted. The festival more than lives up to its name.

Gone Mainstream

Thank you to the local CBS affiliate down here in Austin for picking Deadgirl as one of their four Best Bets at Fantastic Fest. See the entire (short) list here.

Yes it's cool.

From Ain't-It-Cool's FANTASTIC FEST preview, in which (thank you, Massawyrm) DEADGIRL gets pretty high praise:

"The thing’s pretty much fucking brilliant. I have never seen a film that so absolutely captured the sheer horror of peer pressure. Of wanting to be accepted. Of finally finding your own little piece of the world and what you’d do to protect it. A truly great horror film does two things: 1) it creates a memorable and scary monster with which to put our characters (and the audience) in a state of true panic and 2) It shows us how humans can be even worse than the monster presented. Conceptually, this thing is playing with the kind of material that Carpenter, Romero and Craven were all playing around with early in their careers. It is a film with something to say. And a filthy, grimy, semen encrusted way of going about saying it."

Click here to read the whole thing.

Our U.S. Premiere

Deadgirl will be showing in Austin as part of Fantastic Fest. Click here for more info on the two screenings, which will be taking place at the legendary Alamo Drafthouse on Friday and Monday. Rodney Perkins did an amazing job writing our program notes for the festival. His entire write-up can also be found at the above link, but here's most of it:

"Many horror films feature teenage characters but these people are generally nothing more than corpses in waiting and might as well be replaced by showroom mannequins. This is a shame as teenagers face unique psychological and physiological disrputions that are ripe for tales of horror. Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel apparently understand this; their film DEADGIRL mines the recesses of the hormone-wracked adolescent mind to create one of the most original American horror films in recent memory... Given the film's untenable content, which is best revealed by actually watching the film, many film makers might be prone to either pull back from the edge or deliver an incoherent string of set pieces. DEADGIRL, however, attacks its subject matter with an unerring commitment. The precise direction and fluid, dream-like cinematography work in service of an excellent script by Trent Haaga. Instead of marching a set of two-dimensional ciphers through a rote hack and slash plot, Haaga provides fully developed characters that allows the cast of mostly young actors (Michael Bowen has a supporting part) to embrace their roles. The film's attention to characterization and story increases the viewer's emotional investment, thus sharpening the impact of the film's underlying prurience and weirdness. It is useful to note that DEADGIRL is an independently produced feature that was digitally shot with HD cameras and a tapeless workflow system similar to that used by David Fincher on his film Zodiac. This might seem like a peripheral detail but it further reflects the type of novel thinking behind this film. DEADGIRL's marriage of hard content and technical craftsmanship easily raises the bar for independent horror films, and demonstrates a path away from the genericism that plagues the genre as a whole."

Rodney Perkins is our hero.

"One of the year's strongest horror films; ambitious and scary."
- FilmBlather

Here's an astute, unique take on Deadgirl, from Little White Lies, a very cool British magazine that those outside the UK can still luckily enjoy through its website...

“Certainly one of the most disturbing films of the Midnight Madness program this year, Deadgirl takes the idea of woman-as-object and pushes it to the extreme. Two stereotypical slackers – Ricky, the cute and nice one, and JT the one teetering on the edge of sanity – find the naked, dead body of a woman in a sealed room of an abandoned mental hospital. No one knows she is there, and as it turns out, she’s not really dead, but some feral animal that can’t be killed. Women are virtually silent in this film, but that perhaps is the point. Women have no voice when all men want to do is look at them. The dead girl is the perfect woman: she is naked and chained, and no one will rescue her. To JT, women are to be looked at and used for pleasure. But they are that same thing to Ricky; even though he would think of himself as the good guy, he spends most of his days staring at his love interest, Joann. There is even a touch of the homoerotic gaze, when for a brief moment in the library, JoAnn’s stereotypical jock boyfriend stares at Ricky the way Ricky stares at JoAnn. Stereotypes abound in the film as a subtext to the gaze; the male characters each represent a different stage of the evil of men: they all in the end treat women the same, no matter how long it takes them to reach that stage. To emphasize this, directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel let the camera linger in close ups on the faces of their male characters, twisting their own gaze on women into ours on them. And this, in the end, forces the audience to think about their own gaze, and whether they would rescue the girl or run away.”

"Outrageously perverse thrills and mind bending chills... The Hollywood film industry has not really produced this type of scary movie since the 1970’s."

Variety, on the scene

Here we are, as seen by Variety: "Deadgirl directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel were weighing their next festival steps after their Toronto midnight screening. The pic will next play the upcoming Fantastic Fest, where the catalog description will probably be similar to Toronto's: 'Not recommended for first dates... unless they're already dead.'"

Genre in need

"Fucked up. There's no easy way to describe Deadgirl, but that's the first thing I thought when I walked out of the theater… Deadgirl is about two high school kids who find a dead girl in the basement of an abandon insane asylum and realize that she's not actually dead… Watching the story unfold in Deadgirl is part of the thrill, so I'm not going to try and explain any more of it. One of the reasons that it's compelling to watch is that the story is so unique and unexpected, that it was actually quite refreshing, especially considering the horror genre is in need of vastly original ideas like this."
- FIRSTSHOWING.NET

Regrettable Miss

Even though Jeffrey Wells wasn't able to catch any of our screenings, he did include Deadgirl in his short "Regrettable Misses" list, along with Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected, and Fernando Meirelles' Blindness. As avid readers of Hollywood-Elsewhere, we've honestly never been so honored to have been missed. Next time!

See his entire Toronto Sum-Up here.

Frightening & Surprisingly Funny

"The premise for Deadgirl is so wrong and disturbing that it’s shocking the horror film ever got made in America. Two high school friends discover the restrained naked body of an uncontrollable monster girl in an abandoned medical hospital and decide to use it for a little illicit fun. As time goes on, the girl appears to be more than she seems. Jealousy, obsession, and a bloodbath ensue. The twisted project is legitimately frightening and surprisingly funny." - METRO CANADA

Metro is the largest and fastest growing international newspaper in the world, and is Canada’s #1 free national daily newspaper.

A very special little movie

"DEADGIRL is a very special little movie based on a couple of burnout friends who discover a naked and seemingly dead girl in a boarded up asylum (you never know what you'll find in those things). Just so happens the girl has got some life in her, and even when killed by accident she keeps coming back. And since she's strapped down to a table and not technically living some seem to think it's okay to give her a go as many times as they like. But of course when a deal is that sweet, word gets out, and the good times must come to an end – an end that features a good amount of blood, high school crushes and figuring out how to protect the things you love. I don't want to give too much away, but there's a healthy mix of absurdity, slacker humor, nudity and some good scares (all very good things right?) It reminded me a fair bit of TEETH in how it took a pretty taboo and extreme subject matter but presenting it in a pretty light way. It's fun, it's fresh and it's well worth checking out."
- AINT IT COOL

Shock and Awe

"Two new faces at Toronto who show more artistic verve and bravery than many of the festival's masters are co-directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, the filmmakers behind the clever, scary, unsettlingly sexual teenage bondage thriller DEADGIRL. In the pulse-pounding story, high-school friends Rickie and JT skip school and break into an abandoned mental hospital for usual male mischief. Once inside, they discover the body of naked girl tied to a table. Once they decide to keep the woman imprisoned, matters turn bloody very quickly. DEADGIRL is one the smartest teen horrors I've watched in some time, a nervy twist on SAW-inspired victim movies. Companies that do not shy away from controversy and are willing to take risks in order to grasp a youthful audience would be wise to get in business with Sarmiento and Harel. DEADGIRL, from Hollywoodmade, invites gory comparisons to recent thrillers like HOSTEL and TEETH and delivers all the shocks horror fans demand. Any controversy that the film would generate due to the brutal treatment of its core female victim may help build interest from non-horror fans inclined to watch controversial art-house fare. Screened in the early hours of Sunday, the Toronto Festival audience who watched DEADGIRL appeared shocked and awed. For newcomers Sarmiento and Harel, that's the type of festival debut even veterans dream about having."
- INDIEWIRE

Read the entire article here.

Indie Classic

"Probably one of the most challenging films at this year’s Midnight Madness (TIFF) is Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel‘s DEADGIRL, which takes a dark and dreary trip into the underworld of teen adolescence… DEADGIRL, while taking cues from films like SAW and HOSTEL, moreso resembles STAND BY ME and RIVER’S EDGE. The creepy and dark premise, molded around a group of 'innocent' teens, has its main focus on the coming-of-age story than the brutal treatment of the 'deadgirl'... DEADGIRL is not a zombie movie per se, or maybe it is? Either way, the word should be banned from use when converging over the film, as it’s something quite different. DEADGIRL is something that has never been done before and it will leave you shocked. A twisted turn of events make DEADGIRL an immediate indie classic and one of the best teen horror thrillers in years."
- BLOODY-DISGUSTING

A very good thing

"DEADGIRL obviously is going to get tongues wagging. It is explicitly violent, filled with bursts of shocking gore, and equally explicit sexually. Is this what coming of age looks like in our commodofied times, when we think of everything - people included - as objects to be consumed and disposed of at will? This is objectification of women pushed out to ludicrous, though frighteningly plausible, extremes. Like it or not we all know people who would choose JT’s path. We probably wouldn’t even have to think very hard to make a list of them, and that’s where the film’s true horror lies. As shocking as this is, as far fetched as the premise, on an emotional level it is entirely plausible… DEADGIRL has a number of images and sequences guaranteed to sear themselves into your brain, moments of moral degradation you won’t quickly shake off. And, in this context, that is a very good thing." - TWITCH

The next evolution

"DEADGIRL is the next evolution of sex-infused horror genre... But don’t get me wrong, DEADGIRL is steps above the typical torture porn horror film. Directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel have an incredible attention of mood and tone. DEADGIRL floats smoothly between dark comedy and horror, and the result is a coming-of-age film like you’ve never seen before (or will likely ever see again)."
- SLASHFILM

Skirting the Edge

"Pic skirts the edge without going over, and judging from the raucous reception during its Midnight Madness preem at Toronto, twisted auds clearly do exist for such blatantly "wrong" material. The titular corpse more accurately qualifies as a "living deadgirl," with the pic joining the recent trend of zombie movies that never identify themselves as such. Instead, tyro horror helmers Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel focus on the script's more "River's Edge"-like aspects… The directors maximize their location choice for some ominous haunted-house antics. Shooting on a Viper FilmStream camera at Linda Vista Hospital in East Los Angeles, the helmers capture every glint and shadow as they track the teens through creepy underground passages, matching the action with nerve-jangling sound design. Not since "Session 9" has an abandoned asylum been used to such unsettling effect… The two leads show promise, with Fernandez sporting the pinch-faced sneer of a young Joaquin Phoenix. Jenny Spain's a good sport as the deadgirl, flashing her grease-smeared breasts and blackened gums on command (a cult starlet in the making)." - VARIETY

Good Company

Another nice list to be on: Today's Variety lists 17 movies to answer its headline "What are buyers sizing up at the fest?" The batch includes new films by Darren Aronofsky, Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader and Guillermo Arriaga. It also includes DEADGIRL: "Dark fantasy laced with humor by tyro helmers Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel. One of the few available offerings in the Midnight Madness section."

TIFF's Must-See Films

For its 8th annual "Chasing the Buzz" poll, the Toronto Star asked a 24-member panel to name the films they're most interested in seeing. Of the 312 movies at the festival, only 44 were named... and considering the winning pick, Steven Soderbergh's CHE, only received 5 votes, we're thrilled DEADGIRL was included at all. Our single vote came courtesy of Greg Cruse of Tofilmfest.com, who said...

DEADGIRL (Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel): "Shot using digital gear from the next James Bond flick, this is a Midnight Madness choice I think program founder Noah Cowan would be proud of."

The Directors "Speak"

Click here to read a quite lengthy interview newly up at Bloody-Disgusting.

(This photo is of us on location, in the basement boiler room of the aforementioned abandoned hospital)

The Writer Speaks

Click here to see Trent Haaga speak briefly about Deadgirl.

And while you're at it, visit his blog.

Location Scouting - Part 1

Just found a ton of old location scout photos. Here are some from our first visit to the basement tunnels of Linda Vista, a decaying hospital in downtown Los Angeles. We ended up spending some serious time down there...

Midnight Madness Blog

We were supposed to contribute the Toronto Film Festival's Midnight Madness blog - but last minute work on our film have kept us from being able to. Nonetheless, Colin Geddes wrote a pretty great post about us (thanks for making us feel more guilty) that's worth checking out by clicking here.