Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

 

Genre: Thriller/ Crime

Time: 1h 44mins

Director: Rose Glass

Quick Summary: Gym manager Lou falls for Jackie, a bodybuilder who is passing through town en route to a competition in Las Vegas.

Me after watching this

Seriously though, I never really expected to find muscles attractive as I've always been against them, but this has converted me a little bit. 

I did like how '80s/ almost 90's felt, as it wasn't all just generic pop culture stereotypical stuff. We get bad hair, rotting teeth, tacky clothes, and that empty kind of look that the 80's had. Mostly this is your typical crime thriller, but with roided up lesbians with guns. It's violent, erotic, and a little disappointing (I'll get to that at the end)

There were a lot of things I liked about this. Genuinely this is pretty tense, a revenge drama that keeps getting more tense as things keep going wrong, but with the addition of a bodybuilder full of roid rage. All the scenes where Katy M. O'Brian ends up in a downward spiral of anger and pent-up strength left me with my mouth open as she beats the ever-loving hell out of people without stopping. Stewart and O'Brian sell the early days of their characters' relationship well, and a lot of people will be happy to hear there is a lot of sex shown in the first half, which I felt like it just coasted mostly off that and those two being all lovey with steroids because as soon as it gets to the plot that all drops. 

I say this because there wasn't really any character development, one minute the characters act one way and then the next they're completely different. It's almost like they used that part of the film to get people interested, and then moved onto the story. This is a shame because it was interesting and could have done really well if they continued the revenge side of things in a better way than they did because honestly, I think they ran out of time. I mean one character is abused by her husband and is angry when she finds out how he died because "she loved him" and "they don't know what love is". It needed some time on this character so that we could learn why she thought that way, it feels so alien to hear that without any knowledge of this character.

By the time it finally got to the end, I was reminded this was an A24 film. Usually, I love their films full of weirdness, but this was painful to watch. Body horror and some unexplained magical elements are thrown in. Without saying too much, we get to see Katy's character turn into a giant woman. It makes zero sense and it comes out of nowhere. Nothing explains it, and nothing nods to it during the film. I think I'm to assume the steroids did that? For an ending where I expected a big shootout with some dramatic monologuing to fill in the gaps before this film was set, I was incredibly disappointed. It feels like a cop-out. 

Mostly this is watchable since I did enjoy the revenge drama side of it, as well as how brutal the violence was too. Full of twists, erotic montages, and drama; but the romance side could have done with some work as well as the characters could have had more time to develop. There are all the usual beats to a crime thriller that most people will enjoy, but the ending really ruined it for me.

5/10

"Jackie: Anyone can feel strong hiding behind a piece of metal. I prefer to know my own strength."