Suicide Girls Must Die! (2010)

JULY 12, 2010

GENRE: MOCKUMENTARY, SLASHER

SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

During the reality boom of the early 00s, FOX tried to do a horror based one called Murder In Small Town X, in which the contestants tried to solve a murder and stay alive themselves. In lieu of being voted off and just sort of walking or driving away, the “bottom two” contestants would be left in a warehouse or cornfield or whatever and chased around by the killer, who would kill the one who had more votes to leave. It wasn’t too bad, really, but the “reality” portion of it was really staged when compared to the Survivors and Bachelors of the world, and it was hard to buy into the world when you knew all of the people they encountered were actors and no one was really dying. The same exact problem (and many more) plagues Suicide Girls Must Die, in which a dozen of the online pinups are supposedly killed off one by one during a remote photo shoot.

Spoilers ahead, but good Christ, if you’re concerned about having Suicide Girls Must Die spoiled for you, I request you stop reading right this instant and seek professional help. Or just go back to jerking it to online porn.

See, the whole movie is set up very much like a reality show (it’s (inaccurately) dubbed the “First Reality Horror Movie” on the cover), with the confessionals and nonstop establishing shots and arguments that are pieced together from different conversations. The editing is spot on, and I was surprised to learn it was edited by The Thirst director Jeremy Kasten (who used some of the same girls in his film Wizard of Gore) and not a regular reality editor. He really nailed the frenetic style of reality shows, and it’s probably the most successful thing about the film.

However, no one else put that much effort into selling the whole reality show approach. At one point four of the girls are stuck in the middle of the lake after their boat becomes incapacitated. If this was “real”, wouldn’t the cameramen help them? Or wouldn’t they at least ask them to? Instead, they act like typical horror movie victims, panicking, yelling at each other, etc., completely ignoring the 2-3 guys who are probably no more than a few yards away. And that is why this approach makes zero sense - in real world logic, these girls are getting chased around and the killer or killers are ignoring the guy with the giant camera and probably a boom guy as well.

Maybe someone DID realize this, and figured it would be best to explain the plot hole by suddenly revealing that everything was staged (NO!). And I mean SUDDENLY, the last girl is about to be killed and then suddenly they cut to her confessional video. “It was all fake!” she says, without any sort of explanation. The other girls chime in with similar sentiments, and they never bother showing us how they even found out it was all fake, who decided to stage it, or why, or anything else. There’s a jarring plot twist and it just ends, like the end of Holy Grail, but not funny.

Ironically, I wasn’t angry about the “it was all fake” April Fool’s Day-ish ending, because that would require me to give a shit about anything that had come before. And that, my friends, would be impossible, since the film is comprised entirely of girls yelling at each other, dropping the F bomb as if they were trying to outdo the girls in Rob Zombie’s Halloween films, and yelling some more. Due to the “it was all fake” scenario, we don’t get to see much action (they finally offer a pretty graphic kill near the end of the 2nd act, but as with everything else, how this was pulled off or why the other girls didn’t get their own death scenes is not explained), so the movie’s a failure in that respect as well. Even the shittiest slasher movies offer up more than two lousy death scenes.

What it does offer is nudity, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone. As I mentioned before, I am no big fan of the Suicide Girls - tattoos and piercings and multi colored hair just isn’t my type. Gimme Katie Holmes climbing Dawson’s ladder over any of these broads. Some of them are kind of cute, and I am 100% behind the fact that they apparently don’t require their girls to be glorified skeletons, but after a while it became clear that the film was only meant to titillate the folks who are lifetime subscribers to their website, not make any sort of even halfway decent movie as a means to promote their brand to a new audience. And that is baffling to me - if nothing else, shouldn’t I, a die hard horror nut (and no opponent of nudity) watch this movie and say “Wow, I should visit their site more often!” Instead, I can almost see it having the opposite effect - if I was a subscriber, I think I’d be appalled to see where my money was going and cancel my subscription. It’s not like Tube8 doesn’t exist. Plus, they all come across as angry, petty, or just plain stupid women - I have to assume that these are considered the cream of the crop, right? Even if not, it certainly doesn’t set a good example for their brand. I can only hope that paid subscribers get a free copy of this thing.

Incidentally the best part of the film is right at the beginning, when they first enter Maine and for some reason pee in some bushes that are plainly visible to anyone driving by. As they do their business, some blurred out woman starts calling them degenerates and whores and what not. As the film went on and got worse and worse, I began wondering what a REAL “reality” movie with the girls would be like, where they just go around in areas that aren’t into their “style” and people just yell insults at them. I think that would be a lot of fun. For me.

The extras are skimpy, basically just the trailer and a photo gallery in which everyone is fully clothed. Great. However, the song that plays over the main menu (and the film’s end credits, if you make it that far) is terrifically catchy, so I guess it was worth the free rental after all. It’s called “So Tomorrow” by Official Secrets Act, and I’ve linked the video below instead of the trailer for this nonsense. Believe me, you’re better off; this movie seriously has no other reason to exist than to alert people to the existence of this song. Thanks, movie!

What say you?