Girls with Balls (2018)

This has been in my Netflix queue for a while, so I finally hit play. This French horror/comedy flick follows a girls’ volleyball team named the Falcons. After winning the “championship” they are basically chased out of town by an angry crowd. Making their escape in an RV we get to meet the quirky oddball group of characters. Once that is established, they get lost, run into some French Hillbillies (really that is a thing!), and get hunted by them. 

That might seem like an oversimplification or possibly sounds like I didn’t like Girls with Balls… well that sentence sounds weird… but that isn’t the case. I’ve mentioned in the past that I don’t believe or require every horror movie to break new ground or show me some twist. If it is executed decently, I can get behind a formulaic horror flick. With a run time of seventy seven minutes the movie wastes no time establishing the characters well enough that they are distinguishable from each other. That way it is easier to track who gets killed and who lives. Now I can’t say that I was rooting for any of them particularly, but I didn’t hate them either. 

The hunters/hillbillies are pretty much interchangeable. These are inbred mutants or anything like that. Just local folks that probably need to improve their hygiene. They basically serve two purposes in the story. One to act as a foil for the actresses playing the volleyball team to react to and the other is to pad the body count with some funny “fighting back” kills. It isn’t just the team that gets decimated in this flick and that was part of the fun! The most memorable of the killers has to be their vicious attack Chihuahua! Yeah you read that last line right. 

Though viewer be warned. As pretty as the girls are the humor is equally as raunchy. This is especially so if you leave the original French audio and read the subtitles. I feel like the dub tries to soften some of the jokes to avoid offending the more sensitive English speaking audience. In addition to some funny lines, we also get some bodily function jokes, some jokes about sexuality (I did say it was raunchy!), as well as some slapstick physical comedy. I did find myself at least chuckling at many of the gags. 

The kills are good for a movie like this. A lot of it is CGI assisted but it is done well enough and doesn’t linger on the screen so I’m okay with what I saw. It helps that the kills are clever and tie into the humor. In addition to a gnarly looking half blown off hand we also get several headshots, machete violence, and body parts flying. There is even a fun bit when we find out that the French hillbillies are cannibals which means we get to see them preparing their food aka. butchering victims. Not great special effects there but good enough.

Girls with Balls isn’t a classic or even a great movie. But it is solid and, in my opinion, some good harmless fun with cannibals and a body count. While I can’t imagine watching it again it was worth checking out the one time. If you have Netflix this is a perfect way to kill way to kill an hour or so. 

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