Film: Everyone should love Mandy Lane

In a way this was my first Midnight Madness movie. The first one, of course, crashed so surreally. The second was skipped to see the first one, again, only in full this time. But this is the first full length one seen at the right location- the Elgin, where Borat screened, is gorgeous but way too classy for this stuff. Ryerson University feels like home for Midnight Madness, especially last night.

Before the film, in the line, a guy in his thirties or forties and an older woman approached everyone in the line, asking why they chose to see this movie. The guy I think must be a producer, and the woman, as it turned out, is the screenwriter’s mother. I asked her if she’d seen the film before; she hadn’t. I also asked what she thinks of her son writing a horror movie like this. She said she didn’t expect such a thing to happen. I really want to know what she thought of it. Hopefully they’ll whack her on a commentary track.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

All the boys do love Mandy Lane. She’s beautiful (Amber Heard, who plays her, really is), and effortlessly so. She’s sweet, but switched on as well. Rather than hanging with the jocks and cheerleaders like they expect her to, however, she hangs with a cynical emo kid. At a jock’s house at the end of summer, though, tragedy strikes. Due to this, nine months later, Mandy has moved on to ‘cooler’ friends, and the now-blonde best friend is ignored and hated by her.

Her and her new friends, who all at a superficial level seem to be stereotypes, head to an isolated ranch for a weekend of debauchery to celebrate the end of their second-last year of school. And then, wouldn’t you know it, bad shit goes down, because it seems someone loves Mandy Lane a little too much.

The brief description I’d read had me interested in this, but it came as a real surprise. It’s a slasher flick at heart, although that’s what so deceptive here. Halfway through, you realise things aren’t happening in the right order. Slasher flicks are often so formulaic, even many of the most highly regarded ones you know, to an extent, what’s going to happen. Factors are interchangeable, but so much of it remains the same. Here, that’s not the case, so you realise you’re completely lost, and you don’t know where it’s going to go next. It seems such an obvious thing to do; I don’t know why it hasn’t happened before.

The film also features a pretty likable bunch of fodder. The reason I liked Wolf Creek so much was because of how much you grew to like the kids before the carnage began, and it’s a similar deal here. We don’t have a forty five minute set up like in Wolf Creek, but you care about them a lot more than in most other movies of this sort. Many of the kids in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane are deeper than they initially seem, the film dealing with body issues, peer pressure and other things faced by teengs

Another element is how frank these kids are. They really are heading off for a weekend of debauchery, with sex, drinking and drugs. These elements aren’t superfluous to the plot, though; characters actually act drunk, and the sex actually effects the plot.

While it’s not the scariest movie in the world, although the unpredictability does lend it a certain atmosphere and it is pretty frightening at times. You really don’t know who is going to die, and when. The horror itself is very impressive. This is not PG-13 horror, thank God, and there’s no way to edit it down into that horrible state. Nor is it torture-porn, where the violence often becomes so much that it kind of mutes itself out. The gore, it is good. On top of this, it allows itself to be subtle at certain times. I wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t actually notice the first time the killer appears.

Writer Jacob Forman and director Jonathan Levine are ones to look out for. Forman created something surprising and memorable, and Levine seems remarkably young but has a great eye. He's given the film a really desaturated look, but the darks are too dark, and the lights are too light, making the look suitably uncomfortable. He's also chosen a really fantastic soundtrack.

I was extremely impressed and surprised by this movie. I don’t know when it will be out, the sooner the better, because there is a lot more to say about it. This is going to be a pretty big cult flick, I think, and it really, truly deserves it. Mandy Lane has managed to be my favourite film of the festival so far.

10/10

There was a brief Q&A after. The film hasn’t been picked up yet by any distributors, but hopefully this will happen soon. The whole cast bar Mandy herself and one other guy (Anson Mount, who played the ranch hand Garth) were present, and it was the first time they’d seen the film. They all seemed really into the project, if a little distanced because it was filmed more than a year ago. The director really is excitable and clearly has a passion for horror, which a horror director really needs to have. I really want to see this one again.

Today I saw Suburban Mayhem and Paris, je t’aime, both of which impressed. And now, it’s time for the Kiwi horror film, Black Sheep. It’s about zombie sheep! A ram-zom-com?