Riot Girls

Well, right off the bat I love the concept of Riot Girls. A post-apocalypse with queer protagonists where apparently everyone deals with the apocalypse by getting really into punk? Hell yeah!

Riot Girls takes place following a mysterious illness that has wiped out all adults. Now left to their own devices, the older teenagers still alive have divided their small town into the east and west side. On the east side, we meet protagonists and girlfriends Scratch and Nat. Scratch is aggressive, violent and impulsive while Nat is at least comparatively more measured. Nat is also the sister of Jack, the leader of their band of misfits. However, Jack gets taken by the West Side “titans”. So Nat, Scratch and a West-sider named Sony team up to get him back.

What’s really fun about Riot Girls is it really does feel like a world where grown-ups don’t exist. The young people in this film aren’t just smaller adults. Their reaction to the entire situation belays their age, right down to the fact that everyone gets really into aesthetic in this post-apocalyptic world. There’s a simplicity to character’s beliefs and actions that makes a lot of sense given their ages. Especially with the titans, it’s a very good representation of teen villains. The titans are very “baby’s first fascism”. They’re not that much different than high school bullies but with less supervision. In short, most of the characters act the way I’d expect young people to act when there’s suddenly no adult supervision.

I do wonder who the audience for Riot Girls was supposed to be. Tonally, the movie can be a little strange. It’s mostly a fairly light take on a post-apocalyptic setting with some jokes. But the violence is pretty striking. There’s an attempted rape scene and they execute a child onscreen. I assume the movie is for teens but it’s definitely R-rated. Obviously, and R-rating doesn’t necessarily stop underage people from watching it but it might behoove the filmmakers to ensure their product is legally allowed to be seen by its core audience.

Admittedly, Riot Girls doesn’t offer much that’s new in the post-apocalyptic genre. The beginnings of it are glossed over and the main plot of young people rescuing someone from a rival gang is old hat. There’s like a whole subgenre of YA novels about teens in post-apocalyptic settings. The only novel ideas here are the amount and type of aesthetic characters are into and its focus on queer leads. Personally, that’s enough for me though.

Despite not being a groundbreaking nor particularly high budget film, I still really enjoyed Riot Girls. It’s a fun little post apocalyptic movie with queer leads that survive the film. It’s a quick and easy sit and for all that it’s not the most original apocalypse movie, it is a notably unusual WLW film for focusing on action and sci-fi instead of drama and romance.

Overall rating: 6.4/10

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