Meat Eaters

The new ghoul in town discovers the secret nightlife of monsters in this rollicking, blood-spattered horror comedy from McClaren (the Black Cloak series). Ashley Moore, a community college student, wakes up in the woods with no pulse, no memory of the past several hours, and a craving for raw meat. “Dear diary, am I a freaking zombie?” she asks herself. Googling “How do you know when someone is clinically dead?” proves unhelpful, but soon she discovers a rough-and-tumble underworld of fellow “creepies” in her backwater town. After getting tangled up in drama at a monster bar, she forms a found family with her lycanthrope classmates Motley and Harrison. Meanwhile, a fearsome creature stalks the forest at night—and Ashley fears it might be her. McClaren’s cute, funny-faced characters and slapstick action provide an offbeat contrast to the scares, and she adeptly depicts Ashley’s trauma as she processes her new supernatural status. In a clever visual touch, the monster characters shift subtly between human and inhuman in response to their situation, with Ashley growing more gnarly as the story progresses. This mash-up of mumblecore dramedy and gorehound horror slays. Agent: Jessica Mileo, InkWell Management. (July)