One of the things I love about Fantastic Fest and their Russian roulette style ticketing system is sometimes you end up sitting through a film just because you thought it had a clever title or synopsis, and then simply being blown away. That’s what happened with Olivier Afonso’s directorial debut Girls with Balls, which I selected based on the quirky title alone. Afonso is probably best known to genre fans for his VFX work, having worked on such French genre classics such as Inside and Raw and more than a few films screening at this year’s fest. It’s easy to say this will be probably be the best women‘s volleyball team versus gay, cannibal redneck cult movie you will see all year.
The setup here is genre 101 — a kick-ass women’s volleyball team gets lost in backwoods of France on the way to a game, and they happen upon a group of gnarly looking rednecks. What you expect to happen does, and their RV is sabotaged by the hillbillies who descend on our protagonists while they are camping out later that night. The women are then forced to fight for their lives as they are hunted by a group of sack mask wearing, shot gun wielding rednecks. Balls is a horror comedy, and given the setup here they are quick to dispense with the rape card by simply throwing it away. When one of the girls tries to seduce one of the hunters in order to escape, she finds out these guys don’t prefer women as anything other than lunch. This was a fun way to not only subvert this pretty overused and meanspirited trope, but also throw an odd bit of inclusion in there for good measure.
Afonso contrasts the slapstick humor of the piece with his trademark gore effects, giving the violence a very real feel that heightens the tension and adds to the danger of our protagonists. Speaking of which, the film does an effective job at giving some real depth to the women in the film, wisely avoiding some of the more exploitative trappings of the genre. The protagonists here feel a bit more nuanced that you’d expect, and this smartly influences their paths to survival, amplifying the personalities of each character. The horror comedy is probably one of the hardest nuts to crack, and I feel like Afonso and his ensemble of badass ladies nailed it here, delivering the laughs and gore heaping portions. Girls with Balls is a hilarious debut from Afonso that feels like it was crafted with a real love and understanding for genre, paired with a wicked sense of humor.