Rama’s SCREEN

Movies like this make me lose my faith in horror movies. Teen slashers are getting worse and worse and ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE is no different. It’s way too slow, way too predictable, and it comes off as trying too hard. The dialogue is cheesy, the violence level doesn’t… compliment the story, the suspense doesn’t have the power to give goosebumps. Mandy Lane is one attractive character mainly because of the attractive young actress Amber Heard but but the movie is not.

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. Little do they know that Mandy Lane isn’t as innocent as they assume her to be. While the festivities rage on, the number of revelers begins to drop quite mysteriously.

I can’t believe that the director is Jonathan Levine. I’m glad he came up with the awesome Indie flick The Wackness because that would certainly redeem him of this little fault.
What I hate about ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE is that it masquerades as a psychological suspense thriller that tries to be relevant to what the teenagers go through these days, but none of the efforts are on target. All the scenes seem too fake and overplayed.
This is one horror movie that you can respond by saying, “well, that was dumb!”

There is nothing shocking, nothing smart about the twist ending. It’s bad enough that the blood and the gore are there to compensate for everything else the movie lacks, it even has to have some sort of happy ending with a little hint of evil, and frankly I’m not impressed.

One thing I gotta give props to is the cinematography.
I do admire the way the movie captures the scenery of dry Texas and the scenes in the dark.
The hand-held camera work is not dizzying, in fact it think it’s subtle enough to where we could actually see what’s going on and also feel as if we’re part of the movie.

The way the characters are killed off one by one begins well, …as in it does what a horror movie’s supposed to do but as the plot goes on, you get the sense that it loses all creativity. It could’ve been something promising but ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE will go down as a slasher that many people will NOT love.

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