The Loved Ones, 2009.
Directed by Sean Byrne.
Starring Xavier Samuel, Robin McLeavy, Richard Wilson, and John Brumpton.
SYNOPSIS:
Brent is still struggling with the grief of having lost his father in a tragic car accident, an accident in which Brent was the driver. With prom rapidly approaching, Brent is asked to the dance by his classmate Lola, an invitation which he politely declines. However, Lola will not take no for an answer and soon Brent finds himself as her “date” for the evening in her own personal macabre prom from hell.
Ah, prom time. We all have fond memories of the pleasant evening in which we got all dressed up to bid farewell to our schoolmates for the summer or in the case of my prom, bidding farewell for the final time. All in all, prom is a magical evening in which we all have a good time.
But imagine if you spent your prom night in the company of a psychopathic maniac who just happened to take your rejection of their advances in a less than pleasant fashion. Then you’d be in the right mindset to enjoy the very underrated, grisly and darkly comic Aussie horror The Loved Ones, a film which shows that even if your prom night sucked, at least it wasn’t like this one.
The film is very much what I like to call a “tonal cocktail”, a blend of various kinds of tones that really shouldn’t blend well together but miraculously do, creating a wonderful mixture in the process.
The Loved Ones starts off feeling like it’s going to be a tender and moving drama about a young man wrestling with his grief. Brent is clearly struggling with the death of his father and guilt-ridden over his role in the accident that killed him, retreating into a life of drug use and self-harm, with Xavier Samuel’s performance managing to capture this pain and suffering in a very moving fashion.
This serious tone carries into other areas of the film, such as the local police officer who is struggling with the guilt of having never being able to solve the mystery of his son’s disappearance and the effect that it has on his relationship with his family, with this all being fairly well written and well acted by the cast.
Although at about 20 minutes the film decides takes the first of many left-turns into crazy town as we are introduced to the psychopathic Lola, played by Robin McLeavy in a gleefully dark performance that straddles the line between pant wetting hilarity and trouser ruining terror.
When Lola and her father enter the film, the tone becomes much darker and horrific, but in a fashion that feels like the film is trying to tell us some kind of dark joke, with the horrific torture being inflicted on Brett being offset by the sometimes darkly funny reactions of Lola, who often acts like an overgrown child.
For some reason, I couldn’t help but nervously laugh as she showed Brett her scrapbook of past “boyfriends” that she and her dad had kidnapped, with her mocking comments on how one of them “wet his pants” or how another was “booooring”.
The film’s violence while often bloody and sometimes uncomfortable (especially the threats of a hammer and nail to the genitals) didn’t disturb me too much and I really don’t think that’s what the film intended. Instead, I was more disturbed by the very creepy interactions between Lola and her “Daddy”, especially when she refers to him as her “Prince” and how no other boy can compare with him, almost leading to something far more horrifying than any gruesome act of genital-destroying violence.
Lola is possibly one of the most wonderful and underrated of modern horror villains. Robin McLeavy’s performance is one that I simply cannot adequately describe with the written word, with it being one that raises more than a few laughs, particularly the almost childlike way she says things like “where you telling porky pies?”, whilst also being genuinely unsettling when she threatens to murder Brett’s mother and girlfriend, her deranged eyes truly selling the madness of the character. If you watch the film for any reason watch it for Robin McLeavy;it belongs to her and every minute she is on-screen is a minute in which the film excels.
With a careful blending of tones that succeeds where most films fail, managing to mix dark comedy, horror and serious drama without it ever feeling like a badly forced combination, coupled with a terrifying and funny lead performance from Robin McLeavy, The Loved Ones is perhaps the worst film you could watch with your date on prom night. However, if you’re in the mood for something a bit different this October I think this is one film that you should definitely take to the dance.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Graeme Robertson
