THE LOVED ONES
The Loved Ones is one of the best Australian horror films out there. And I absolutely hate that even thinking about good Australian horror films leads me down this path of lamenting how truly dogshit the Australian film industry is, but it's so hard to avoid the conversation. They come hand in hand because good films like this one feel so rare. It's probably because the funding bodies of Australia are obsessed with making films set in decades that cost a lot of money to recreate. Why make cheap movies audiences want to see when you can spend eleven million dollars to produce a film for a target demographic that will die before it hits cinemas?
The Loved Ones is a sick little production. It stars Robin McLeavy as Lola, a girl who invites a boy named Brent to the school formal. When he turns her down, Lola and her dad kidnap him and force him to go to prom with her at their house with a lobotomized woman named Bright Eyes. McLeavy is great as Lola, who’s absolutely fucking nuts and the movie is a proper horrifying romp.
Loved Ones is a rock solid creepy ass horror movie with a scary lead performance, I shouldn’t use paragraphs talking about it to lament the state of Australian cinema. But. Take any good Australian horror film and have a look at the director’s IMDB and be bummed out that their filmographies all look the same. In the decade since The Loved Ones, Sean Byrne has made one more film, a small American horror film. No other Australian films. The same is true of the guy who directed Lake Mungo, another Aussie horror film that appears on lists of Best Aussie Horror Films. I would bet money that this was not for a lack of trying.
Where would I fit into The Loved Ones? I can tell you this, Lola absolutely would not have any interest in asking me to the formal so there is no way I would end up with a drill to the head and thrown in a pit with a bunch of braindead exes. But I still would have gone to the formal. Try and keep me away.
IF I WERE IN ‘THE LOVED ONES’ I WOULD: NOT BE LOBOTOMIZED BUT LIVE WITH THE EMBARRASSMENT OF THAT NIGHT FOR SO LONG THAT I’D WISH I HAD BEEN
