All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)

User Rating:

6.0/10   

Director:

Jonathan Levine

Writer:

Jacob Forman (written by)

Release Date:

15 February 2008 (UK)

Genre:

Horror | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

There's something about Mandy all the boys love.

Plot:

A group of high schoolers invite Mandy Lane (Amber Heard), a good girl who became quite hot over the summer, to a weekend party on a secluded ranch. While the festivities rage on, the number of revelers begins to drop quite mysteriously.

Plot Keywords:

Party | Drugs | Duo | Female Killer | Knife

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Amber Heard	...	Mandy Lane
Anson Mount	...	Garth
Whitney Able	...	Chloe
Michael Welch	...	Emmet
Edwin Hodge	...	Bird
Aaron Himelstein	...	Red
Luke Grimes	...	Jake
Melissa Price	...	Marlin
Adam Powell	...	Dylan
Peyton Hayslip	...	Aunt Jo
Brooke Bloom	...	Cousin Jen
Robert Earl Keen	...	Keg Trucker

MPAA:

Rated R for strong disturbing violence, pervasive drug and alcohol use, sexuality/nudity and language - all involving teens.

Runtime:

USA:90 min | Canada:88 min (Toronto International Film Festival)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Ireland:18 | USA:R | Netherlands:16 | Singapore:NC-16 | UK:18 | Germany:18 | Sweden:15 | Finland:K-18 | Australia:MA | Portugal:M/18 | New Zealand:R18

Filming Locations:

Austin, Texas, USA

Company:

Occupant Films

Trivia:

A little girl died in the upstairs bedroom in the ranch house after asphyxiating. Locals claim she still haunts the house. It is claimed a little girl in a white dress was seen several times in the ranch house during night shoots, even though there were never any children on set.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the night Chloe wrote with magnet-letters "Chloe is hot" on the fridge. Next morning the letters are mixed up.

Quotes:

Bird: You know we are all trying to get you right?
Mandy Lane: Get me?
Bird: Get with you. Here's the deal, I'm not like the other guys.

Movie Connections:

References "American Idol: The Search for a Superstar" (2002)

Soundtrack:

In Anticipation of Your Suicide

A Nutshell Review: All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

All the boys love Mandy Lane, and the way she is portrayed by Amber Heard, who wouldn't? She's blonde, she's demure, she's so hot that the camera in the movie's introduction to the character, lingered on her T&As. She's a fine athlete though we don't really get to know what kind of graaes she's getting. Every boy in school wants to talk to her, and every one of them wants to get into her pants, earning bragging rights to be the first amongst everyone else to have conquered probably the last bastion of virginity in school. People would do silly things like dying for her too.

In typical slasher flick formula, a group of students, Mandy included, organized themselves for a getaway in a secluded ranch, where a ranch hand Garth (Anson Mount) provides that element of question as to who amongst the group will be the hunter, and who will fall as prey. Like how the formula warns against decadent teenage lifestyles, such as the unwritten rules of having the non-virgin being dispatched first and the likes, you're constantly kept guessing as everyone in the group, save for our goody-two-shoes Mandy, get sloshed in a flood of sin, with the smoking of weed, snorting of coke, being highly sexually charged and active, and downing alcohol as if it was water.

It does take quite a while for the first person to fall, and you probably won't feel much for the characters that had to kick the bucket in the most violent of deaths, which get shown quite graphically, only to pull back at the last minute through visual tricks and edits the filmmakers use. But for slasher flick fans, it's a long ride to get to this stage, and frankly speaking given that the characters all don't appeal to you (i.e. you couldn't care less if they live or die), the movie does seem to coast along the tried and tested, until its last act.

Surprisingly, the narrative decided to reveal its boogeyman quite early on in the film, which provided some perplexing questions. Again for those familiar with the genre, there'll always be a thought niggling in your mind in disbelief that the plot would be so straight forward. Granted as mentioned, the payload comes at the finale, which I thought had two meanings, depending on which concept you subscribe to. First, following reality that the most perverse amongst us tend to be the one most disconnected, and second, punishment coming from someone who doesn't see eye to eye on immoral lifestyles, and want to put a deadly stop to it.

I did see the revelation coming, but for the longest time had decided not to believe my gut feeling in the hopes that it would develop into something that will genuinely blow my mind. It's not perfect, but it did have its moments with the following of recent trends in the slasher genre that bad guys don't have to necessarily finish last. Nothing fanciful here, but it still worked to a certain degree. And kudos to both the casting director in putting Amber Heard in the titular role, and for the actress to pull off one of the more memorable lead characters in such a genre flick.