ALL THE BOYS
LOVE MANDY LANE
(Review)

“There she is, boys. Mandy Lane.
“Untouched, pure. Since the dawn of Junior year, men have tried to possess her, and to date, all have failed. Some have even died in their reckless pursuit of this angel.
“I’ve invited her out to my ranch this weekend… my kingdom.
“So I ask you, gentlemen, am I the sh!t? To which I reply, ‘Yes, I am.’
“But will she come?”

Hidden Palms’ Amber Heard is Mandy Lane, the virginal object of lust for every straight Junior male at her high school, and she’s about to spend the weekend with a bunch of her new friends.
The weekend, however, will turn out to be wilder than anyone bargained for.


Jonathan Levine’s All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is an old school slasher flick, shot in a decidedly modern style by cinematographer Darren Genet.
To successfully meet its slasher credentials, it’s got the rabid, horny teens drinking and doing drugs and having sex (or trying to, at the very least), as well as the steadily rising body count.
That part of All The Boys—and its climactic surprise—is the part that works. Even though I twigged to the “surprise” as early as the tragic prologue that opens the film, it’s still pulled off credibly and with grim conviction in the film’s closing moments.
My biggest problem with All The Boys though (and I’d still have this problem, even if I hadn’t seen the twist coming), is the fact that the majority of the characters are shallow twits who just want to get a good buzz on and squirm into Mandy’s pants.


Other than Mandy (who is, of course, presented as the film’s Last Girl), there are arguably only two other characters who could possibly elicit our sympathy, one of whom is the first to bite the dust, and the other (the ranch hand, Garth, played by Conviction’s Anson Mount) presented as initially suspicious in that brooding, mysterious sort of way; Could he be some psycho cowboy? You may very well ask yourself. (There’s even mention of Garth’s back story to get the audience curious and alerted to the possibility that he could conceivably be effed-up.)
Other than these three, the rest of the characters we’re made to spend the film’s running time with are immature, self-absorbed, and largely obnoxious teens who you honestly don’t mind getting iced.
But that sort of slasher film—where the audience cheers the killer and not the would-be victims—is deservedly dead and gone and I don’t appreciate being tempted into a state of indifference towards a movie’s characters, so much so that I start to ache to see them drop like flies just so I can be relieved of their annoying presence.


As much as I appreciate the climactic swerve the script—written by Jacob Forman—takes, it’s that distinct lack of empathy for a majority of the film’s characters that throws me off about All The Boys.
Would it have been too much to ask that we’d been given a few more characters to care about? I think that would have made the film’s climax even more potent.
Or maybe if even just Chloe (Whitney Able), the resident b!tch, had been given a little more character development, then things may have played out a little better; of the other characters, it’s Chloe whose issues we’re given a glimpse of, but the script sadly doesn’t take it much further than that.

On the plus side, there are good performances all around, particularly from Heard, Mount, and Joan of Arcadia’s Michael Welch (as Mandy’s friend, Emmet).
Here, Welch thankfully makes up for the bad performance he gave in Steve Miner’s Day of the Dead remake.


My misgivings about the characters aside, All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is still a noteworthy modern slasher flick that deserves a look-see, certainly more than many of the recent slasher remakes; Glen Morgan’s Black Christmas and Nelson McCormick’s Prom Night come readily to mind.
And being an original story, All The Boys also has the leg up on any of the recent slasher remakes, even the ones that had some merit.
At the very least, Levine and company are looking forward, instead of taking the Retrograde Express towards creative stagnation the way most of Hollywood seems to be headed.


Parting shot: Welch also has an on-screen reunion with his Joan of Arcadia co-star, Aaron Himelstein, who plays Red, whose family ranch is the setting for All The Boys’ bloody goings-on.

(All The Boys Love Mandy Lane OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by BLT & Associates]; images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com and beyondhollywood.com.)

SHROOMS
(Review)

“According to the ancient Irish druids, they believed it was like a border to another dimension. They gave the ability to commune with the dead, uncontrollable ferocity, shape-shifting, and, last but not least, foresight, the gift of premonition.”


Thus says Jake (Factory Girl’s Jack Huston, soon to be seen in the Vikings vs. alien extravaganza, Outlander) of the effects of ingesting the “dreaded Death’s Head fungi” (if, of course, it doesn’t kill you first).
See, Jake’s about to give a bunch of young Americans the trip of a lifetime in the cold forests of the Irish boondocks.
At least, that’s the plan, before things go horribly awry (as they often do in these types of movies), and people start dropping like flies (again, as they often do in these types of movies).


Now, with a premise that kicks off with a bunch of kids who travel all the way to Ireland just to get high on mushrooms, Paddy Breathnach’s Shrooms initially does nothing to endear itself to me.
As I’ve mentioned ‘round these parts before, I have little patience for characters who are simply asking for it. When you start munching on any old fungus that you find in the middle of a forest, or start tripping by yourself in the middle of the night, well, let’s just say I’d rather reserve my sympathy for pregnant women and scruffy orphans.
Throw in a local legend involving a Black Brother, a Lonely Twin, and a Feral Boy (which is told to a bunch of impressionable, and later on, drug-addled bunch of dead meat walking), and the results are pretty much as expected.


That also goes for the climactic twist, which is telegraphed rather early on in the film’s running time, and makes for an incredulous resolution to Shrooms’ goings-on.
Is the “twist” plausible? Perhaps. It even actually makes some sort of cautionary sense.
But with the manner in which the narrative unfolds, one has to wonder, Isn’t that putting a terrible strain on the laws of space and time?


Twist aside though, my problem with Shrooms is that it features characters that engender no sympathy, and thus, leave the audience without a care as to their welfare.
You know you’re in heaps of trouble when the would-be victims (who include Alice Greczyn from TV's Windfall and Step Up 2: The Streets' Robert Hoffman) start whimpering “This isn’t happening,” and “I should never have taken those mushrooms,” and all you can think of—rather uncharitably—is, Well, that’s what you get for being a bunch of raging gits.
Granted, Shrooms has its merits, primarily the rather good cinematography by Nanu Segal (who’s shot music videos for the likes of Soft Cell, Shed 7, and Super Furry Animals, and has also worked with Breathnach on a West Coast Cooler advert). But with characters that aren’t terribly sympathetic, the film soon degenerates into a visually agreeable, though largely unengaging cinematic experience.


What I find most curious about this entire enterprise is the fact that the first time I crossed paths with Breathnach, it was with Blow Dry, the comedy with the tag line “Love Is In The Hair,” about the British Hairdressing Championship, that had a killer cast which included Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson, Bill Nighy, and Rachel Griffiths. (Though they were partially off-set by the casting of Josh Hartnett and Rachael Leigh Cook…)
Blow Dry was a nice little comedy in that British feel-good underdog-emerges-triumphant school which includes entries like The Full Monty, Brassed Off, and Kinky Boots, to name a few. (It’s a telling point that Simon Beaufoy wrote both The Full Monty and Brassed Off.)
So it was odd to see Breathnach turn to horror with Shrooms, without even stopping at the horror-comedy midpoint. (Breathnach’s next film, Freakdog, is again apparently a straight-up horror entry.)


At any rate, Shrooms, like Jonathan Levine’s All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, is a post-millennial slasher that looks great, but has its share of problems. (Just for the record, I believe All The Boys is the better deal.)
And while Shrooms is a passable enough watch, with a few bits here and there that work, it isn’t quite the wild, balls-out trip I was hoping for.

(Shrooms UK quad courtesy of impawards.com [design by Hoo-Ha]; images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)