MOVIE REVIEW: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

I watched a preview for this and then desperately wanted to see it. But it never came to a theatre near me. And it still hasn't come out on DVD, except on Region 2 and Blu-ray, which does me no good. So I ended up watching it online on the weekend as a last resort. It was worth it even though it lagged a lot.

After summer vacation, when Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) returns to school everyone notices that she "got hot." Suddenly she's popular; all the boys want to date her and all the girls want to be her friend. This alienates her best friend, Emmet (Michael Welch). And when he is involved in a popular jock's death, no one wants to have anything to do with him.

Nine months later Mandy is invited to party with her new popular friends at a ranch in the middle of nowhere. All the guys are fighting over her and all the girls are jealous, and then people start to die.

The plot and the tagline are what interested me even before I saw the trailer.

Everyone is dying to be with her. Someone is killing for it.

A slasher where the motive is winning a girl? Sounds original. Better than killing for revenge - or for no reason whatsoever.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is reminiscent of classic slashers. It has a soundtrack made up of oldies such as The Go-Gos instead of the usual metal. The kills are creative instead of torture-porn. The characters are interesting and compelling instead of the usual stereotypes (even though the over-privileged popular kids reminded me of The O.C.).

The dialogue is great, using a lot of humour, but it's still scary. Most of the movie takes place at night, and that paired with the fact that the ranch is in the middle of nowhere, makes it even creepier.

I figured out who the killer was way before it showed (it's pretty obvious). But there was another twist at the end that I didn't guess.

It's been a good week for me. I saw two movies recently that I loved enough to give a 5/5 rating. Hopefully it will come out on DVD so I can watch it again.

Rating: 5/5