Wednesday, March 30, 2011

not since Mandy Lane

“If you want to do that sort of thing, I suggest you go somewhere else.”


Hi dolls. Look, I'm sorry I’ve been away for a while. Let's be honest.  There hasn't been a single movie worth discussing. Besides, I’ve been desperate to educate myself on the world beyond the west side of the 405 freeway.  For example...


It has recently come to my attention that one must travel intercontinentally if one really wants to find a horror movie that works beyond its perfunctory opening weekend grosses. Take for instance a little gem I discovered during my anthropological field work at the Sydney Mardis Gras called The Loved Ones (2009).


Imagine Disney's PROM! after she wound up drugged and inappropriately touched by All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Like all those Disney girls, she's a got crazy religious parents so she's forced to carry the baby to term because they live in a fascist state like Tennessee or Alabama. Poor thing. But don't cry for Disney's PROM! because the unwanted baby that she winds up having is The Loved Ones and it's fantastic. With all the gowns and glitter, with all the cute boys with no shirts on, the kids getting high and going to third base in their parents cars, all the nerdy boys scoring with impossibly out of their league slutty chicks, The Loved Ones delivers everything you could want from a Prom movie and it has man-eating zombies.   It's better than a Vegemite sandwich and a pint of lager (that's Australian for burger fries and coke). 


The Loved Ones is about that almost-hot Aussie kid who was in that gay, Australian surfer movie and then went on to cash a real cute paycheck to wear pancake makeup and get high with the cast of Twilight in a lace-front wig. 

Despite being a male protagonist in a horror film, we can tell this almost-hot Aussie kid is not a gay because when the average girl next door asks him to go with her to the prom, he doesn't even remark on her cheap, drugstore brand eyeshadow; rather, he politely declines.  You see, the almost-hot Aussie kid's been a bit preoccupied since that otherwise idyllic day when he and his father were out on a driving lesson and they happened upon a shirtless man swathed in his own blood meandering down the lane.  Long story short: the dad winds up dead.  It happens. 

Six months later, the almost-hot Aussie kid's still going through it.  He can't even bring himself to tell his adorable girlfriend that he loves her, even though she sees no shame in blowing him in the high school parking lot.  Good for her.  I mean, this kid is so sensitive that he wears a razor blade necklace around his neck to better cut himself.  True to straight guy form, these character flaws only makes him more desirable to everyone else.  In short, this almost-hot Aussie kid from the gay surfer movie is a teenage dream.


Of course, being a teenage dream invariably puts a boy in mortal peril (just ask that Jonas brother that fucked over Taylor Swift).  When you're pretty and popular, everyone feels like they own a part of you.  I don't know where I'm going with this, but you're just going to have to trust me - The Loved Ones is delicious. 

This is a movie where a street smart girl see no shame in giving her boyfriend a handy-j on the dance floor at the Prom.  This is a movie where an unpopular, homicidal tween listens to Kasey Chambers on repeat.  Enough said.  First Nicole Kidman and now this!  Thank you, Australia, this was well worth the flight.