I finally saw "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane." Pros and Cons:
Pros:
-The acting, for the large part, is pretty good, especially Amber Heard as the title character, and Whitney Able as Chloe.
-While not the goriest slasher flick (
), it's still brutal enough. Reminded me of a Jack Ketchum novel at times (that's definately a good thing), and at moments, felt like a slasher movie as written by him.
-It's a movie that understands genre conventions, but never feels too aware of itself, too self congradulatory, or too busy riffing on other horror movies.
-Lesbian overtones.
-Great opening sequence.
-
I don't know why, but I liked that.
Cons:
-Most of the characters are completely uninteresting. Sure, it's stupid to say that about a horror movie, but it spends plenty of time trying to develope some of them, yet it fails to do that right. Only Mandy Lane and Chloe were interesting. The others are totally unsympathetic, even when the movie tries to make them so.
-The twist and the ending. The twist itself (
) is terrible, and the ending-I'm still trying to figure that out.
Overall, I'd give it a 7 or a 7.5 out of 10. It's good, well acted enough, and definately kept my interest, but a part of me thought "that was it?" Worth a look, though not worth all the hype and praise it's been getting.