Film Review: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)
The contemporary landscape of Hollywood is characterised by a seismic shift in how stardom is constructed and maintained. The "new paradigm" of film production has rendered it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for actors to achieve traditional star power. This phenomenon is particularly acute for actresses, who have historically been squeezed into narrow boxes of beauty or character. This trend is not new; it has been simmering for decades, becoming painfully obvious in recent years. Many women become household names not for their acting prowess, but for the tabloid controversies surrounding their private lives. The most prominent example of this phenomenon is Amber Heard. While she has appeared in major productions, her first leading role was in the 2006 horror thriller All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, a film that is one of the more obscure and intriguing artifacts of the past quarter-century.
In All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Heard plays the titular character, a Texas high school student who has recently blossomed into an impossibly beautiful young woman. Her physical transformation makes her the obsession of her male classmates, creating a dynamic of envy and desire that permeates the school. One of these suitors is Dylan (played by Adam Powell), an arrogant jock who invites her to a pool party at his family's home. Mandy agrees to attend on the condition that her quiet, nerdy-looking and unpopular friend Emmett (played by Michael Welch) is allowed to come along. The party sets the stage for the film's central conflict: Dylan aggressively attempts to seduce Mandy, while Emmett’s attempts to defend her lead to him being bullied. In a moment of petty revenge, Emmett dares Dylan to jump from the roof of the house into the pool to impress Mandy. Dylan complies, but misjudges the distance and hits the concrete edge, dying instantly. This tragic event serves as the inciting incident for the narrative.
Nine months later, Amber has managed to integrate herself into the social circle of Dylan’s friends, while Emmett remains an outcast. One of these friends is Chloe (played by Whitney Able), a cheerleader who, despite being considered conventionally beautiful, is deeply insecure about her body. She invites Mandy to join her and a group of friends for a weekend getaway at the remote ranch of their mutual acquaintance, Zed (played by Aaron Himmelstein). The ensemble expands to include Bird (played by Edwin Hodge), a quiet African American school athlete, and Jake (played by Luke Grimes), an arrogant jock who attempts to woo Mandy despite bringing his girlfriend Marlin (played by Melissa Price) along, who is in conflict with Chloe . When they arrive at the ranch, they are met by Garth (played by Anson Mount), the ranch hand and former Marine, whom the girls find immediately attractive. However, the idyllic weekend quickly devolves into chaos. As the teenagers engage in drinking, taking drugs, sex, and immature "truth or dare" games, they become the target of a mysterious killer who begins taking them out one by one in gruesome ways. It takes time for them to realise what is going on, and even longer to determine whether the killer is the stranger on the property or someone familiar to them.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is, in many ways, a generic slasher film. It follows the classic blueprint of a mysterious killer stalking and murdering horny teenagers, a genre that reached its zenith in the 1980s and was, to a degree, resurrected two decades later. However, beneath this familiar surface lies a film with intellectual pretensions. The project originated in 2003 when film producer Chad Feehan, scriptwriter Jacob Forman, and production designer Tom Hammock envisioned it as a thesis project while studying at the American Film Institute. The film, directed by Jonathan Levine, clearly drew inspiration from genre classics like Tobe Hopper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but also incorporated elements from non-genre films like Terrence Malick's Badlands and Sofia Coppola's Virgin Suicides. This hybrid approach suggests a desire to elevate the material beyond mere exploitation, aiming for a synthesis of horror and atmospheric drama.
Despite this impressive background and the high aspirations of its creators, what audiences see on screen is a film that struggles to hide its very low budget of $750,000 US$. The setting is relatively limited, confined largely to the school and the ranch, and director Jonathan Levine tries to make the film visually interesting by employing MTV-style rapid editing and a lot of dark cinematography by Darren Genet. While this style creates a certain energy, it occasionally makes the plot slightly confusing, obscuring the narrative flow in favour of aesthetic flourishes. Like their 1980s counterparts, the film is intended for a slightly more adult audience, and it features brief scenes of nudity and explicit violence, although not as exploitatively gory as most "edgy" horror films released at the time.
The cast is solid, though the performances vary in effectiveness. Amber Heard, the main star playing the lead character, unfortunately leaves the worst impression of all. She serves primarily as an object of the male gaze, often having blank stares that make her motivations and allegiances a complete enigma. Her peers, who were mostly unknown at the time and, like former model Whitney Able, were likely hired for their looks, leave much better impressions. They bring a necessary level of humanity to their characters, grounding the film in a reality that Heard struggles to achieve. The same goes for Anson Mount, who delivers a charismatic performance as Garth. Mount is these days best known for playing Christopher Pike in Strange New Worlds, but in this film, he provides one of the most compelling performances in the ensemble.
While the ending is somewhat satisfying in a visceral sense, the complete film rests on a rather weak and implausible twist at the end. This twist can be justified as the author's attempts to subvert genre tropes, specifically the "Final Girl" archetype, but it feels somewhat forced. Some critics have attempted to justify this twist as a sort of socio-cultural commentary, pointing to obvious visual and even plot references at the Columbine High School massacre. However, this interpretation requires a level of engagement with the text that feels like a stretch, and all this nuance will probably be lost on today's audience's attention spans. The film attempts to be smarter than it is, and the payoff doesn't quite match the build-up.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane had its premiere at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was met with positive reviews and a sense of excitement. However, it subsequently suffered from serious problems around distribution. The Weinstein Company, unlike their foreign partners, waited to actually launch the film in the North American market. This delay was catastrophic for the film's release strategy. When the film was finally launched, it was in 2013, by which time Amber Heard was already established as something of a star due to her roles in Pineapple Express, The Rum Diary, and Machete Kills. This irony played out in the film's box office numbers; the delayed release coincided with Heard's rising fame, and her involvement likely helped generate curiosity and viewership, albeit for the wrong reasons. It is a tragedy that a film with such a promising premise and talented cast was buried for seven years, only to be rescued by the very tabloid notoriety that is the bane of modern actresses' careers.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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