So. This film exists. Yeah, I saw this tonight so it's still fresh in my mind, and, I still don't really know what to make of it. 'The Loved Ones' follows Brent (Xavier Samuel), who survives a car crash in the intro of the film, but his father does not. Six months later Brent turns down Lola Stone (Robin McLeavy) after she asked him to the prom, since he has a girlfriend, Holly (Victoria Thaine). Lola takes it gentle. And by that I mean her father (John Brumpton) kidnaps him and Brent, Lola, her father and Bright Eyes (Anne Scott-Pendlebury) all have their own little prom. Brent gets tortured for an hour of the film.
Yeah, this is a torture porn film. Apparently film makers don't realise yet that viewers don't want to watch someone get tortured for most of the film. The weird thing though, is that this particular film works. It shouldn't work, but it does, the film manages to remain captivating. This is despite some unnecessary scenes like Lola's father driving with Brent in the back, because apparently the makers think we needed multiple scenes of this, and one scene which tells us that Lola is crazy, despite the fact that we already know that. While the film seemed to lack drive at first, the film really does pick up.
There's also a sub-plot of Brent's friend Jamie (Richard Wilson) goes out with Mia (Jessica McNamee), this involves them going to prom, getting drunk and doing drugs in the car, before being kicked out of prom for Mia's sex drive. I was thinking there must be a point to these characters and these scenes, but there wasn't. They don't help Brent because they don't know what happened, they don't end up accidentally stumbling upon the Stone residence, they just go to prom and that's that. But then again the scenes are welcome, because otherwise the whole film would just be Brent getting tortured, which would quickly put the audience off.
The gore is really effective. There's enough there to gross out the audience, but not on the scale of 'The Human Centipede 2', so it does horrify the audience rather than just sicken them. There were in fact moments where I just couldn't watch the whole clip and had to look away for a few seconds. They even had some psychological horror in the film, the best example being (Along the lines of) "You have ten seconds to piss, or my dad will nail it (His penis) to the chair".
The acting meanwhile, is brilliant, and that's probably why this film is enjoyable. Xavier Samuel was spectacular as Brent, especially since he doesn't utter a line of dialogue past the twenty minute mark, since Lola injects bleach into his voice box (Though I'm pretty sure that would actually kill him). Samuel's expressions, his movements, he portrays a lot of emotions, despite the fact that he can't say a word, it really is stunning. John Brumpton as Daddy Stone also gives a very strong performance, as a man who is willing to do anything to please his daughter, and yet he's also visibly terrified of her as well.
But the true star of this film is Robin McLeavy for her portrayal as Lola. It's so easy to get lost in her performance, you'd forget that she's a fictional character. She can change from creepy to seductive to pure insanity with ease, her character turns out to be more frightening and memorable than originally thought. She has brilliant chemistry with pretty much every single other character she shares the screen with, especially Brumpton, her onscreen father/love. Yes, there's incest. Thankfully nothing happened, but this doesn't deter the fact that Robin effectively makes this film.
So initial feelings of this film, to be honest, I had no idea what to think of it. I was probably leaning more towards not liking this film, but now that I wrote this review, I've gained some respect for it. While the acting is great, Robin is the cream of the crop, she is the main reason to watch this. The film itself is pretty good, even if it is torture porn. It keeps you captivated, the characters are actually likable and the film has a brilliant flow. Watch this simply for Robin McLeavy, it's not the best film in the world, but it certainly has one of the best villains in it. Don't watch it though if you're going prom, you might get paranoid.
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