The thing you need to know first and foremost about Deadgirl, playing this weekend at SIFF is that it is a film about the limits of loyalty and the struggle to do right when you’re not even sure what that means told via a story in which a group of teenaged boys repeatedly rape a zombie woman chained to a table. It’s a hard idea to process and even the movie’s own makers understand if you decide to pass–they know that their film’s not for everyone. It’s definitely not for the squeamish: there’s a minimal amount of gore, but what is shown is pretty extreme. More importantly, though, Deadgirl is simply a very disturbing movie which would be no less disturbing if not a single drop of blood were shed. It’s definitely one of the more disturbing films I’ve ever seen.

Deadgirl presents two high school losers in Anytown, USA, for whom a good day at school is when the bullies decide to ignore them instead of beat them up. JT only sticks around to back up his life-long best friend Rickie who sticks around mainly to moon over JoAnne, a girl he’s had a crush on since they were both little kids and the current girlfriend of the captain of the football team, who just happens to be the leader of the bullies that savage outsiders like Rickie and JT. One day the two cut class to drink beer at a long-deserted hospital and discover a naked woman chained to an operating table. Although the boys never say the word “zombie”, they quickly determine that the “dead girl”, who is never known as anything else, is neither fully alive nor fully dead. Rickie thinks they should tell someone, but JT gives in to his basest desires and before long he’s abandoned the rest of his life to spend all his time repeatedly violating the “dead girl” with the help of another friend he’s brought into their closed circle. Rickie agonizes over the situation–he hates what his friend is doing but he doesn’t know what to do. It’s not until a series of violent confrontations that Rickie is forced to consider to whom he owes his greatest loyalty and whether or not he has the strength to do what his conscience tells him to do.

The script was written by Trent Haaga who himself considered it unfilmable due to its intense nature. Co-directors Gadi Harel and Marcel Sarmiento know their movie’s premise is a challenging one: “The movie is divisive,” says Sarmiento, “and we knew it would be.” Though the movie is driven by the existence of the dead girl, the film isn’t really about her, he says. “It’s a critical look at men and how they treat each other.”

Harel agrees and stresses: “We were very careful about how we presented things. There’s nothing titillating about it.”

To the directors’ credit, that much is true. The rape scenes are frank but they’re not an underhanded attempt to arouse the audience. There’s no attempt to justify or rationalize JT’s exploitation of the dead girl; it’s given as fact that his behavior is wrong. Rickie knows this from the beginning and makes frequent reference to it; from the moment he begins his misuse of the dead girl JT is never portrayed as anything other than the abuser that he is. That’s the challenge for Rickie: he knows that what his friend is doing is wrong, but saving the dead girl from his depravity requires “betraying” his only real friend.

“Kids today can really relate to it,” says Harel. “Older people say ‘Why don’t they go right to the police?’…but, it’s almost harder to turn your back on a friend.”

Rickie’s uncertainty about how to proceed is realistically portrayed by actor Shiloh Fernandez who spent time prior to shooting just hanging out with Noah Segan, who played JT, to establish a credible looking friendship. Most of the cast do a great job at making their character believable; Candice Accola is particularly effective as JoAnn whose small role is vitally important to the story. Credibility starts to decline as the movie continues, however; a crucial plot point rests on the bullies taking the word of one of their victims that his completly fantastic story is true.

JT eventually becomes little more than a cardboard villian who exists only to illustrate Rickie’s existential conflict. This wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have to see so much of him. As relative tame as the rape scenes are, there are an awful lot of them. While it’s sadly all too believable that there are “JT”s out there who would sooner take advantage of the helpless than aid them (according to the filmmakers, this matter of fact assertion is what causes so many men in the audience to object to a portrayal that women find entirely realistic), it does stretch the bounds of believability that they would do nothing else. The thinner JT’s character becomes, the harder it becomes to have any sympathy for Rickie’s and while you’re probably never going to like the guy who is less “good guy” and more “not quite as bad guy”, the movie’s success hinges upon being able to feel for Rickie’s dilemma. Finally, I found the movie’s conclusion unsatisfactory based on all that happened.

Harel and Sarmiento aren’t surprised by this; they say that at previous screenings of the film half the audience wants to stay and talk about it and the other half refuses to make eye contact as they exit the theater. The directors are expected to attend this weekend’s screening of Deadgirl as part of SIFF’s “Midnight Adrenaline” series.

Deadgirl screens May 29 at midnight at the Egyptian Theater, June 5 at 9:30 in Kirkland