Citing films including Heathers, Jawbreakers, Mean Girls, and Tragedy Girls as inspiration, Eating Miss Campbell is sure to draw the attention of those with an appetite for darkly comic teen stories. It charts the story of suicidal vegan goth girl Beth (Lyndsey Craine). All teenagers have problems, but Beth’s are stranger than others. Each time she attempts to take her own life, she awakens to find herself transported to another world. Every new place is actually just a pastiche of some cheesy horror movie. Her latest endeavour places her inside the framework of Eating Miss Campbell, a cannibal teen-rom-com with dark undertones.
The premise, a girl waking up, trapped inside new horror films, is super interesting. However, Eating Miss Campbell doesn’t show it. By the time the film starts, Beth is just arriving into this new movie setting. It’s somewhat of an awful tease to what could have been, but is only meant to be a means to explain the exaggerated world within which the story unfolds. Those easily offended will need to steel themselves as Eating Miss Campbell pulls absolutely no punches with writer and director Liam Regan leaving no stone unturned.
Not one to shy away from hot button topics, Regan takes aim at both teen suicide and mass school shootings. These are not issues that everyone will be comfortable seeing portrayed on screen in such a way. Rather than a school dance, the whole film is building to an all you can eat tournament. The prize for the winner is a gun with which the winner can decide to either shoot themselves, or gun down their classmates. It’s a confronting plot point and one that will definitely leave a bad taste in one’s mouth.
Eating Miss Campbell also circles around sexual predators. With so much attention paid to guns, a thread about teachers in the school that are grooming and praying on students, is left to a subplot. The more restrained treatment keeps it on the right side of the line, managing to generate a chuckle or two as the adults responsible start to meet their makers.
Moving away from the topics explored, Eating Miss Campbell is well constructed. Care and attention have been put into making the violence and gore as over-the-top and silly as possible. The excess of bodily fluids helps move Eating Miss Campbell into a more cartoonish world. It’s a manoeuvre that is much needed to take the sting out of some of the controversial elements, but doesn’t quite pull the feat off. With a portion of the story seeing vegan Beth become a cannibal there are of course practical effect elements for her to munch on. Practical effects always look better than CGI and here it helps to tie Eating Miss Campbell to the cheesy horror films that it’s parodying. There are not many of these though as more time and energy is pumped into other story aspects, and the cannibalism takes more of a backseat than one would expect.
The make-up and costuming are an especially strong standout. Not only are they immaculately made and applied, they also work as nods to other texts. Beth affirms her goth girl status with a strong black lipstick, pale skin, and a Wednesday Addams inspired dress. This look becomes her uniform and by leaning into such an iconic image of goth the viewer already knows a lot about Beth before she has even spoken a word. The object of her affection, Miss Campbell, has a look that exudes Bettie Page whereas Beth’s nemesis’ Clarissa, and her sidekick’s Melissa and Sabrina, wear clothes with Heathers affectations. As with Beth, their appearance reinforces elements of their characters.
Nods to preexisting popular culture isn’t reserved just for the look of the characters. Regan throws every reference he can at the screen, to the point where it gets so crowded that it overloads itself and becomes white noise. Almost every shot or line is a callback to a film or television show, and whilst all film fans love an Easter egg, Eating Miss Campbell is so drenched by them that it’s almost drowning. It quickly becomes hard to keep up with them all, the initial enjoyment and excitement of mentions to films such as Tragedy Girls descending into tedium.
Existing as like a British Troma movie, those that settle in with Eating Miss Campbell should have some idea about what they’re getting themselves in for. However, whereas many Troma are zany and super silly, the farcical elements are dropped here in favour of sarcasm. A film that will ruffle plenty of feathers, Eating Miss Campbell appears on a one-movie-mission to cause controversy. You have been warned.
Eating Miss Campbell
Summary
The blood and vitriol flow freely in this acid-tongued, potty mouthed, somewhat ill thought through analysis of high school tragedies.
Eating Miss Campbell was reviewed at Arrow Video FrightFest 2022.
