Synopsis
Being rejected by your crush is always a downer. How does Lola come to terms with it? By having Brent, her soon to be king, kidnapped and brought to her. The end of the school year dance is tonight, but Lola has a much more intimate affair planned. Will Brent survive the party favors, or become just another one of The Loved Ones.
Thoughts
Young love. Such a beautiful thing. Well, unless you're psychotic, infatuated with your father and feel that the only way into your crushes heart is to knock him unconscious, tie him up and torture him, then probably not so beautiful.
The Loved Ones is a short, but rather entertaining horror film of the demented aspect hailing from Australia. By no means is it at all an original effort. Writer/Director Sean Byrne does deliver a solid film though. Hell, what's original these days anyways.
The premise: Girl ask crush to end of the year dance. Girl gets rejected. Girl kidnaps and tortures crush.
I enjoyed this for some other reasons than it being somewhat entertaining, having great make-up or even the acting. Horror films are often plagued with the half hour to forty-five minute prologues that seem to drag and don't really add to the climax. With what could've been summed up in a three minute back story from a character later in the film, or even have been the opening scene, makes a film suffer with it being dragged out to the point where you've decided to distract yourself with something else. With The Loved Ones, the viewer's fast tracked to what they've come to see: torture, blood and power drills. You see what I just did? I explained something that could have been summed up in literally a sentence. The pacing of this film was quick and to the point.
Robin McLeavy portrays Lola in a way that the viewer may think the actress herself is somewhat demented. It's not very often that I get sucked into a performance from someone in a horror film. Most of the time they're not very memorable. Now, her performance is far from Oscar worthy, but at least she comes off as believable, rather than bland and forgetful. This isn't the case for the others in the film. McLeavy holds the film on her own and if this were some powerhouse film, maybe that would be a complete disappointment, but it isn't, so, I'll let that slide.
Earlier, I stated that it's not an original effort. But, it does seem to breathe a little bit of life into the torture angle of horror. As of lately, the torture angle has been bordering, if not crossing the line between horror and snuff films (A Serbian Film). The Loved Ones leans more towards the violence and gore and doesn't leave you asking the question “why did I just witness rape?”. One might say this is the more tasteful of the torture films out there. I'll say it.
A harrowing tale of love and insanity mixed in with a comedic subplot of “what could have been”, makes this something not to pass on.
IMDB: 6.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 7.3/10
WeFLM: 6/10
Come for the party. Stay for the power drill.
-kp
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