The Film (3.5/5)

    Chris Seaver is a director whose work I go back quite a long time with.  Back when I was younger and more into things Troma-esque and trying to get my first  feature off the ground I discovered Chris Seaver's 2001 SOV feature Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker. I admittedly fell for it's bizarre low budget charm, characters, and dialogue, and admittedly began to seek out more. Some of it like the director's Filthy McNasty and his later Quest for the Egg Salad were easy to get as they were all released through Tempe Entertainment. Others films like the Anal Paprika trilogy, Scrotal Vengeance, and 12 Inches of Dangling Fury had to be purchased via DVD-R through the directors own website. Not all of the films were good, and some were downright bad, but they all carried a admirably distinct vision.
 

    It has been 14 years since that first viewing of Mulva, and we come to his 2015 feature The Weirdsies. The Weirdsies follows a group of four virgins in their mid 20's, 3 women and a gay male friend of theirs. The group desperate to finally put their virginal state behind them discover a rumor of a decently dead male body in the woods adjacent into to their town, and decide to search for the still erect corpse (according to the film's internal logic an erection will last 48 hours after death). Their plan is to use the corpse to take their own virginity.

    Basically, The Weirdsies is what happens when the kids from Stand By Me grow up to be horny perverts. The story itself is quite loose, and is obviously used a template to get the characters from one comedic situation to the next, and as a springboard for Seaver to show off his stylized dialogue. There is even a musical number in this one.

      Going back around to the dialogue, if you have seen one of Seaver's films you know that he writes in a very unique style of dialogue that is  all his own.  If you have not he writes with a specific style that has it's own made up slang, and even its own distinctive rhythm. This, of course, at times makes it seems like the characters are speaking in one voice, or if we want to look at it from another perspective, this is Chris Seaver's world, and everyone talks this way.

     Regardless, having seen quite a few of his films (well over a dozen at least) it all felt very familiar by this point. That being said there were quite a few laugh out loud moments, the most obvious of which featured a cameo appearance from the director himself proving that the person best able to act in his films is himself.  I should also call out the lead performance by Meredith Host who has been acting for Seaver who well over a decade, and does quite an excellent job bringing her character, Kris to life.
 

    The film is quite a darkly comic affair from the writer/director, but when your story is about a group of friends trying to have sex with a dead body that sort of comes with the territory. The film is mostly about the interaction between the 4 characters, and the villain/bully who wants to put a stop to their plan. The actors have a very good on screen chemistry, and their relationships feel quite natural.

    One thing I would like to call out, is Seaver's desire to push himself as a filmmaker on a technical level. Over the years his films have improved from a purely visual standpoint film by film year after year. Mulva, looked better than Anal Paprika, and Egg Salad booked better than Mulva. For a microbudget auteur, he is seemingly always looking to use better technology to make his small films shine just a little bit more. The Weirdsies has the distinction of being the most cinematic looking of his films that I have seen, and I look forward to seeing him further progress in the future.