All The Boys Love Mandy Lane
Well if the titles true then I will be lifting up my skirt to check because this is one boy who not only disliked Mandy Lane, he loathed her.
Who is she though? High School queen (Amber Heard – Alpha Dog) and still in possession of that staple of horror movie survival, her virginity, she is the girl that all the guys want to be with and all the girls want to be. Adored by the Jocks, the cheerleading team and geeky friend Emmet (Aaron Himelstein – United States of Leland) they are all literally dying to get close to her. Taking a break in an old creaky house reminiscent of the dilapidated building of Tobe Hooper's horror classic, the teens make the same mistakes that the Scream movies made redundant; primarily having sex, going into poorly lit locations, and having sex….again.
Attempting to pay homage to the exploitation splatter fests of the 70’s such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Mandy Lane is even filmed/viewed through a bleached imitation filter to give it some credence. Successfully done that can result in the striking cinematography of Marcus Nispel’s 2003 Chainsaw remake, but in the hands of first time director Jonathan Levine it smacks of a parlour trick in an attempt to disguise the seen-it-all-before wafer thin premise of his college kids gone wild film.
Arriving at a time when high school violence is at the forefront of media exposure because of the tragedies at the Amish school in Paradise, Pennsylvania and the more recent Virginia Tech massacre the irresponsible, almost comic book violence is quite hard to stomach and unnecessarily graphic. Movies cannot be blamed for such atrocities, as is popular in the tabloid press, but the timing of such a release makes the films slapstick finale one of unintentionally bad taste. (The previous sentence was written at the time of initial viewing in mid-2007, it gives some indication to the quality of the film that it has taken this long to find a release.)
The young actors work with what they have been given but are no different from your average Jeepers Creepers or I Know What You Did Last Summer killer fodder so illicit no audience empathy as they fall foul to our “mystery” murderer.
Levine’s debut direction in a genre that has given birth to such stylistically accomplished film makers as Sam Raimi is also completely wasted, showing no signs of flair or invention that is needed raise such clichéd fare above the norm.
