Verdict
Summary
This is not a film I’d recommend to anybody who’s ever seen a movie set in a bomb shelter because you’ve already seen this movie in that case.
Plot: Eight teenage girls become trapped in an endless birthday party after a massive (imaginary?) earthquake. The girls’ sanity and psyches dissolve as they run out of food and water. Eventually, they regress to their baser instincts, exploiting each other’s fears and insecurities.
Review: Oh, the joys of watching a movie set in one location at the end of the world: I’ve seen just about every post-apocalyptic motion picture that takes place in a bomb shelter, and now I’ve seen Ladyworld, which is set in some kind of mental facility that houses eight teenaged girls, and they all get trapped in the house after some kind of apocalyptic catastrophe. Was it an earthquake? Was it a nuclear attack? Is it just a ruse that riles up the girls into a mental state of complete breakdown? Does it matter? What happens is systematic: The girls elect a leader to lead them through the next few days as their resources dwindle. They eat birthday cake for days. They piss in the washing machine because why not? They eat lipstick, dress up like banshees, and inflict pain and torment on each other as the house becomes divided by allegiances. One girl, who is a childish thing attached to her toy doll, becomes an object of torture by the alphas. They fight. They pretend their cell phones work. They go completely crazy … together. Some of them get frenzied up when they insist that a man is lurking outside the house, with the intention of raping them. This only makes them worse off because chances are they’re already on the verge of psychosis. Did I mention that they all have knives and are willing to kill anything that moves, besides each other? This is everything that happens in Ladyworld, and the screeching, shrill soundtrack will make you want to pull your ears off your skull.
From co-writer / director Amanda Kramer, who stages her film like a high school production of great import, Ladyworld gives her cast of eight (nine if you count an unfortunate dude, who serves as a figment of the girl’s imagination) plenty of opportunity to emote and act like young women in the midst of nervous breakdowns. I paid notice to actresses Annalise Basso and Maya Hawke, two actresses I’ve seen in other projects, but all the rest faded into the ugly scenery. This is not a film I’d recommend to anybody who’s ever seen a movie set in a bomb shelter because you’ve already seen this movie in that case. This one is worse. In every way, but ironically the characters don’t go far enough off the deep end for this type of movie. They should have gone completely crazy, murdered each other, and eaten the flesh off the corpses. Because, you know, why the heck not?