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.)

DAY OF THE DEAD (2008)
(Review)

Welcome to Leadville, Colorado, on the day the dead start to walk the Earth.
A remake of George Romero’s third installment in his Dead series, this is a straight-to-DVD feature starring American Beauty’s Mena Suvari as Sarah Bowman, born and raised in Leadville, and back as part of a supposed military exercise that quickly turns into a tour of zombie Hell.
Sadly—and much like the surprisingly rapid decay and decomposition of newly-turned zombies—the film itself likewise quickly degenerates into a tour of low budget horror Hell.

First of all, we really didn’t need remakes to Romero’s originals. That’s a given.
But, however unnecessary the remakes may have been, it’s to the credit of directors Tom Savini and Zack Snyder (who gave us 1990‘s colour redux of Night of the Living Dead and 2004‘s adrenalized zombies in the revisited Dawn of the Dead) that the first two were actually well-made and ultimately, excellent additions to the ranks of zombie cinema.
This Day though, is frankly a terrible mess.
Brought to us by Steve Miner—who directed the second and third parts of the Friday the 13th franchise, as well as Halloween H20—the Day of the Dead remake should really just have stayed dead, or at the very least, spent a little more time in deep freeze while another draft of the script was cranked out, and another, more capable director chosen for the unenviable task of walking in Romero’s shadow.

To begin with, why the script by Jeffrey Reddick (who co-wrote Final Destination) chooses to favour a youngish cast is a mystery, as this feels like nothing so much as part teen horror flick, part kids dressing up to play soldier.
Now, just to be clear, I actually thought Suvari was passably effective here; save for some rather screamy bits, she passes muster, as does Stark Sands (Conor McNamara, in Nip/Tuck’s “2026” flashforward episode), who brings a curious pathos to his role of Bud. (If you’ve seen Romero’s original, you’ll get an idea what ultimately happens to Bud, based solely on his name.)
The script though, doesn’t really treat their characters with any real respect. But while Suvari and Sands attempt to make the most of what little is given them, the other performers aren’t so skilled or lucky.
Joan of Arcadia’s Michael Welch (as Sarah’s younger brother, Trevor) and other Nip/Tucker AnnaLynne McCord (as his girlfriend Nina) are vaguely ridiculous, as is Torchwood‘s Matt Rippy (as CDC doc, Logan). Nick Cannon meanwhile, as Salazar, is merely amusing, but not in a good way.
It’s also telling that the two older members of the cast, Ian McNeice (as Paul, the local DJ; you’ll recall McNeice as Robert Drudge, the police surgeon in From Hell) and Ving Rhames (who plays Capt. Rhodes, the brother mentioned by Rhames’ character in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead), are given ultimately thankless roles here. Rhames, in particular, is made to look like quite the fool in his final onscreen moments in Day.

Why the script chooses to forego the claustrophobic setting of the original Day is also another mystery, instead opting to show us the disaster that befalls Leadville, when the film’s budget clearly can’t afford to.
And while there is an anti-military swipe towards film’s end, it’s piddling compared to the socio-cultural commentary Romero manages to squeeze in amidst the gore of his originals.
Also, for those of you who took issue with the running zombies from Dawn, well, you’ll ab-so-frakkin’-lute-ly abhor Miner’s Day zombies, who not only leap, they also actually spider climb across ceilings.
I kept on waiting for them to go all Yamikazi on Suvari’s a$$, but sadly, they didn’t.
And while some of the gore effects are adequate, there’s also some rather dodgy CGI and visual effects in here, particularly when we get some zombie BBQ on the menu.

Miner’s horror record had been spotty before this—Friday the 13th Part II was the last time Crystal Lake was any fun, but his Part III and Halloween H20 were not particularly good. (Though the on-screen pairing of mother and daughter Scream Queens Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis in H20 was admittedly a great and knowing nod.)
Now he’s touched a third classic horror franchise and left behind an odious reek, like an alley cat marking its territory.
The man should stop while he’s behind…
And the remakes of Romero should stop too.

(Day of the Dead OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)