All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a 2013 horror film about a group of high-schoolers who invite Mandy Lane to a weekend party on a secluded ranch where a number of revelers begins to drop mysteriously.
Chasing the ‘hot’ girl in high school, hoping to score some much-fantasized-about sex, is practically a cornerstone of an entire genre, most absurd comedies with a few finding the right combination of heart and horniness to make it work. Then you get something like All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, a film that seems to start like so many others in the teen-romp rack before taking a sharp turn to the left and straight into twisted horror. Sure, it’s got hot girls, horny boys, a slasher mentality, and a party to boot, but then, it’s not any of that at all. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a strange, ethereal journey that’s more of a dark metaphorical fairy tale than a cheap psycho with a knife flick. And while it might not go quite as far down the hole as it feels like it should, this earns some pretty solid chills.
THE STORY: Deep in the heart of Texas, Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) has a growth spurt over the summer and comes back to school a real stunner, developing into a curvy, beautiful blonde that turns every boy into a horned-up tizzy. At a pool party, one boy goes to extremes to get her attention and pays the ultimate price, which, even almost a year later, only seems to inspire the rest of the boys to try and claim her virginity. Seriously, she’s like a walking, talking, pheromone factory that’s had a chemical spill in the school’s water supply.
A few friends then take a trip out to a ranch, where again, the goal for the few boys in tow is to get it on with Mandy, who is still trying to deal with her newfound sexual allure. As the guys work their pitiful magic to get into her pants, the party-goers are slowly disappearing, a killer in the bunch offing the high schoolers one-by-one.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR: Horror films tend to follows a few basic rules, at least with it frights, splitting it all between raw savage gore and psychological madness. Writer Jacob Forman and director Jonathan Levine are smart enough to know that their story is earmarked for such things yet because so, attempt to flip expectations to throw us off. And it works.
One of the best tricks up their sleeve is a reveal at the halfway point where we see the killer in the flesh, something most movies would try to make a surprise. However, the film knows that if we’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, we already know who it is, and as such, allows the character to evolve into something much more terrifying.
Yet there’s a lot more going on than just the hunt, both for Mandy’s body and the bodies piling up in the dark, as the film is also a sharply-written story with a much-deeper narrative that, for discerning viewers, offers plenty of commentary on a string of issues, from the sexualization of teen girls to the horrors of modern school violence. This is deep stuff.
Levine isn’t interested in the hyper-stylized blood-splattering cinematics of many trendy horror films, instead, aiming for a much more guttural rawness, both in its depictions of sex and its acts of gut-twisting violence. Levine credits Tobe Hooper‘s genre-defining The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as influence for much of the of the latter half’s look, and it’s greatly obvious in the third act’s macabre sun-soaked massacre, which is a harrowing, sensational bit of distress. I love how the actions is steady, deliberately-paced, and perfectly uneven. If you love movies, watch how carefully structured the last act is played out because it’s really a thing of beauty. Bloody, horrifying, beauty.
THE TAKEAWAY: Filmed in 2006 but released in 2013, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a flawed film, not quite as innovative as its influences but nonetheless a daring and highly-affecting homage to such. While its themes of revenge and sex are certainly well-tread, director Levine does some genuinely smart takes on these old standbys, offering up a jarring, very satisfying experience for fans of thinking horror. From the opening title cards (complete with a blood-curdling scream) to the eye-popping cinematography (Darren Genet) at the ranch, this is not your typical slice and dicer. If you haven’t seen this yet, and are on the fence, don’t hesitate. Mandy Lane will love you back.