[DVD Review R2] ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE
Right, lets get this preamble over with quickly shall we? I’m not going to bother mentioning the amount of horror movies I’ve seen, or my feelings regarding teen-slasher movies, or any of that kind of thing. Instead let’s just get straight into it, shall we?
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is yet another entry in the ever growing slasher genre, directed by Jonathan Levine (who made the jump from short movies to full features with this movie) and written by Jacob Forman. It tells the tale of Mandy Lane (Amanda Heard), a teenager who “got hot” over the summer and is now the object of desire for all the boys in her school. During her last year in Junior High she is invited to a party by one of the “jocks” where a terrible accident occurs, caused by her best friend Emmet (Michael Welch).
This accident breaks the friendship between Emmet and Mandy Lane, and she instead becomes friends with the “cool kids”. Cut to nine months later, where Red (Aaron Himelstein) is planning on having a party filled summer at his parents ranch and wants Mandy Lane to be there so he colludes with Chloe (Whitney Able) and Marlin (Melissa Price), two of Mandy Lane’s girl-friends, to get her there.
When the group of friends, which also includes two other guys called Bird (Edwin Hodge) and Jake (Luke Grimes), arrive at the ranch they soon start drinking, taking drugs etc but it’s not long before people start vanishing and it becomes apparent that someone is killing them off one by one to get to Mandy Lane. Will they all survive the night?
First off, I would like to say, that I love the look of this movie! It has a real washed-out look, with desaturised colours which, added to the 80’s centric soundtrack, really gives the movie an “old school” feel and really utilises the six million dollar budget to great effect.
The young cast are similarly superb in their roles. They are all totally believable as their characters and their interactions with one another work very well - which when you consider a great many of the scenes where they are partying are actually improvised makes total sense! I have to be honest, most of the time I get really irritated with teen actors in slasher movies, and am just waiting for the killing to begin, but this time out they didn’t really annoy me that much! Some of them might have been acting a bit like dicks but it just reminded me of my friends in college, so that made a nice change!
Jonathan Levine does a great job with the direction and pacing of the movie. The build up to the bloodletting is wonderfully dealt with, with the score of the film adding to the overall tension and thankfully they don’t resort to sudden loud bursts of noise to try and make you jump out of your seat instead just using the natural tension of the situation of someone stalking this group of friends to make the viewer uneasy and his use of desaturised colour in one scene, then bright colours in another and utilisation of speeded up shots and freeze frames certainly gives the movie a very definite style and marks him as a director to watch in the future.
And for all the gore hounds out there there are some pretty grusome moments (a scene involving a girls jaw and a second scene with an injury to one of the characters eyes springs to mind!) but, thankfully, the movie never drifts into “torture porn” excess territory!
So. Now for the problems with it.
My wife and I watched the trailer for this movie before we decided what we were going to watch as it was a toss up between this and Frontier(s) (read my review of Frontier(s) right here). We did choose to watch this, but after watching the trailer I turned to my wife and said “If this turns out to be like Shrooms at the end I am going to be very disappointed” (read my review of Shrooms right here).
And then, after watching the first ten minutes of the movie I guessed the other half of the twist as well.
Now, that could be because I watch way too many horror movies, but either way it is always annoying to watch a trailer and be shown enough to figure out a movies ending.
Yes, it can be argued that I shouldn’t have watched the trailer before the movie, but I am going to assume that the trailer on the DVD is the same as the theatrical trailer used to advertise the movie so I guess I shouldn’t have seen it before watching it in the cinema? Because if I had seen the trailer and then seen it in the cinema then I would still have known what was going to happen at the end!
The only thing I will say in defence of the “revelation” of who the killer actually is is that at least they don’t drag it out for the entire movie! Once it’s totally apparent who is behind the killings, through glimpses of the killer during the early deaths, they just openly reveal who it was, which for me was a great thing as if they had tried to keep it secret until right up until the end of the movie my feelings towards it would have been greatly diminished!
Special Features
Interview With Amanda Heard: The one and only extra on the disc is an interview with Amanda Heard, who talks openly about her character, the reason she wanted to star in the movie and quite a bit more. It’s interesting enough but it doesn’t make up for the lack of a commentary track with the director, which I would really have been interested in listening to, or a decent Making Of. A bit of a missed oppertunity, really, in my opinion.
Theatrical Trailer: Don’t watch this before you watch the movie! 
So all in all, this is an interesting take on the teen-slasher genre and, while it might not offer anything particularly new to the genre, at least it doesn’t feel totally generic due to the direction of Jonathan Levine. Trust me, he could well be a director to watch out for in the future if this release is anything to go by. The only really disappointing thing is the lack of any real extras on the DVD, as I can’t really knock it for my having figured out the ending before it got there! If you are in the market for an entertaining slasher movie then you could really do far worse than All The Boys Love Mandy Lane.
Related Posts:
- [Movie Review] WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY
- [BLU-RAY Review] SHROOMS
- RETRO DVD Review (R1): BAD BOYS II
- RETRO Movie Review: LOVE ACTUALLY
- [Movie Review] THE LOVE GURU
3 Responses to “[DVD Review R2] ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE”
Sigh… Anyone who says that they saw the ACTUAL twist from this film coming “a mile off” is exaggerating in my opinion. In terms of who the killer is etc. I thoroughly agree with you Wyv, this trailer is ANOTHER to fall into that “over generous with the footage” category!
I liked this film. The, as I said, ACTUAL twist wasn’t particularly clever but was very nicely done. I liked it. The “whose the killer” reveal though could have been better handled.
I’m more interested in seeing Levine’s new movie The Wackness.
I say give this a try Grundy! Wyv’s rating is definitely accurate. It’s an enjoyable enough watch. I’ve just rewatched the trailer for it again to try and understand where he was coming from about the twist ending.
I’ll say this, Wyv is a goddamn genius if he managed to pull knowledge of the twist from that! Me? I went into this cold, only knowing the online hype without having seen the trailer. With hindsight though, the trailer makes the film look a lot more stale and conventional then it actually is by movies end!
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