The Loved Ones (2009)

What It's About: When Brent turns down his classmate Lola's invitation to the prom, she concocts a wildly violent plan for revenge.

Review: Oh, high school. Everyone has varying memories, the majority most likely painful. Mainly because not only are we all going through biological and psychological metamorphoses, but right in front of others who will do whatever it takes in order to make their discomfort the bane of our existences. Rumor mills, derogatory names, physical fights - you name it, teenagers have done it since the dawn of time. And Lola exceeds it all; she's that creepy girl in school, probably sits in the back of the classroom either staring at everyone or at her desk. And when the current object of her affection, Brent, turns her down for the final school dance of the year, well, that's just a little too much for poor Lola's ego to take. I would love to say it's because Lola has been pining after Brent for years, because she does every little thing she can for him, and he's just a stuck up jock, but...

Sometimes, bitches just be crazy.

After surviving a car accident that killed his father (which was caused by a teenage boy with a mutilated chest walking down the middle of the road), Brent is finally getting back into whatever teenagers call normality.Things are rocky with both his mother - who doesn't want him to be driving a car, the most prestigious of teenage achievements, because he was driving at the time of the accident - and his girlfriend, Holly, to whom he seems cold and withdrawn. But he's looking forward to taking Holly to prom, the last school dance of the year before graduation. Before real life starts. And then there's Lola, who pops up by his locker one afternoon and asks, in the most chipper of voices, "will you go to the dance  with me?" Brent smiles and says he's already got a date. Which is not what Lola wants to hear; with the help of her father, she kidnaps Brent and proceeds to throw a little dance party of her own.

Woo!

The meat of the film lies around Lola's party, which involves some incredible torture on the part of Lola and her father. Everything from mental to physical torture is employed in Lola's revenge against the boy who wouldn't take her to prom. Lola Stone and her psychotic 'daddy' are absolutely masterful in their gleeful games at Brent's expense; and this isn't just a one-time fluke. Lola has a scrapbook made of the boys she's done this to over the years. Even Bright Eyes, Lola's mother, appears to be a victim of her father's from bygone days. The apple never falls far from the tree, does it? Robin McLeavy is amazing as Lola, from her expressions to the cadence of her voice in expressing her crazy desires, pushing her captive to the brink of survival. She makes what she's doing amusing and almost delightful, up until you realize exactly what she's doing to another living person. And just wait until you see what she has in her basement!

Queen of the loony bin

While The Loved Ones certainly comes off like another torture porn film and is weighed down by a dragging ending, the middle section of the story paired with the character of Lola 'Princess' Stone makes this movie a gem of a horror film. The prolonged ending involves Brent's subsequent escape and the final demise of Lola (or so we assume - killers are never good at staying dead), wrapping things up to give them a tidy happy ending. I would have been fine with it ending once Brent gets trapped in Lola's basement, but I suppose that the creators felt it necessary to show Lola going completely over the brink and losing what little tenebrous hold on sanity that she had left. All in all, The Loved Ones is definitely something to not be missed out on.