All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

MARCH 27, 2007

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane has yet to be released yet, as far as you know, so it’s sort of pointless for inclusion here, as the whole point is to be able to discuss the movie after (via the comments option). But since only one person has posted anything so far, I guess it doesn’t matter.

I got this from a friend who raved on and on about how great it was and would make 100 million dollars when released. With those rather underwhelming impressions in mind, I decided to give it a spin.

Well it is pretty good, but 100 million is about two zeroes too high. With no stars (other than Anson “Urban Legend 2” Mount), a soundtrack that has not one Fall Out Boy song, and a relative lack of eye-catching visuals (the killer’s costume will not be a Halloween staple), I can’t see the film being the type of hit Scream was, especially when another great modern slasher with no real marketing appeal, Behind the Mask, completely tanked in theaters just this past month (and so help me god, if Hatchet doesn’t match the screen average of the last Saw film, I will declare every supposed horror fan in the world a fucking douchebag).

But it’s still a solid film, a little gift to slasher fans that are sick of all the folks in slasher movies talking about better slasher movies. There is no Scream-style winking here, instead it’s a very low key ol’ fashioned ‘Lets go to a barn in the middle of nowhere and not notice when every 10 minutes another one of our friends disappears’-style slasher.

Back to the soundtrack though: it’s terrible. Fall Out Boy would actually be welcome. The first 20-30 minutes have bad indie bands running nonstop (including a particularly execrable Norah Jones-y cover of America’s “Sister Golden Hair”), and then they are sprinkled throughout the rest of the film, even when there’s no electricity and it sticks out like a sore thumb (Hey composer: COMPOSE, damn you!).

There are also occasional (and unfortunate) avid farts and strobe edits, and one sequence looks like Tony Scott directed it while on break from Domino. More baffling, the characters in the scene do whippits, much like not a single person has done in the past fifteen years or so.

Otherwise, it’s a refreshingly enjoyable slasher film, with some moments here and there that made me incredibly happy. For example, the phone is dead, of course. A character picks it up and listens for the dial tone. Not hearing it, she says “It’s dead” and puts it back. YES! She doesn’t tap the cradle 20 times like every other character in horror movie history has done, to no avail. And, apart from the aforementioned avid farts and such, it’s directed well. No one demanded a cut every second or so, which was nice to see. One scene in particular, near the end, where the killer is chasing one of the girls in a car, has a nice shot that follows along for what seems like two or three whole minutes. Like I said, it’s not necessarily visually impressive, but it’s visually correct.

I have no idea when this is coming out, if it’s going direct to DVD or if it’ll play theatrically, or anything, but when it does find its way to you, I highly urge any slasher fan to check it out. It’s got a nice 70’s sensibility to it that has been altogether absent from modern slasher films.

And a guy gets blown and then refuses to return the favor for the girl. Then SHE gets killed. Hahahahaha. Yeah!

What say you?