XAVIER SAMUELS IN THE LOVES ONES

A painful end to high school

Heavy metal is an effective background for this gore-fest from Australia, about a young man tortured on prom night by a girl he refused to date. Late Night item at the San Francisco International Film Festival, it was similarly featured in the Toronto Festival's Midnight Madness series last year, where it won the Cadillac People's Choice Award for its brightly hued, well-shot nastiness. I don't particularly enjoy this sort of thing, but they're good at the down-and-dirty genre thing down under, and this first-time director shines in his use of sadistic evil, brave resistance, and the usual weapons of mayhem, razors, a power drill, a torture pit, and cars that run astray and kill or maim people. He also makes us care about and understand his characters. The Loved Ones focuses on teen angst and family dysfunction within a horror genre format. It's been called a fusion of Pretty in Pink and Misery, with a dash of Carrie.

In an introductory sequence, Brent (Xavier Samuel) is driving on a highway with his father beside him when he swerves to avoid a bleeding shirtless man (a harbinger of things to come) and hits a tree, killing his dad. His mother falls into a catatonic state from the shock of this. This is a prelude to Brent's senior year in high school. As graduation approaches, Brent's coping with his grief and survivor guilt through a blend of rock climbing and good weed, heavy metal, hanging out with his girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thaine), and taking long walks with his dog. When Lola (Robin McLeavy) comes up in the hall and invites him to the prom, he naturally tells her he's going with Holly.

Brent gets kidnapped on prom night by Lola, who holds him prisoner at her house and tortures him, aided by her equally creepy dad Eric (John Brumpton). She turns out to have kept a weird diary, and during Brent's torments, she and her dad take Polaroid photos to add to it showing dressup games involving the hapless and bravely silent Brent. As Rod Armstrong, the SFIFF planner of genre film showings, writes, "Brent is a remorseful, laconic hero who finds a visceral desire to live amid the most extreme circumstances. " Since the film has already spent enough quality time with him before his ordeal for us to get to know him, Brent's silence during the horror segments is an original device that works well.

Reviewers have differed on whether it makes sense for Byrne to keep shifting back and forth between Brent's prom night from hell and his best friend's evening with his date, which goes wrong in a more conventional way. It's true the film might have been neater if the two separate plot lines were joined toward the end, but the subplot functions to remind us this is prom night and to add suspense as well as relieve us from having to watch nonstop goriness. In the subplot, Byrne, who wrote as well as directed, shows his ability to combine a convincing kind of John Hughes-style teenage lifestyle study with his dive into nightmare cruelty. There's a nice irony in the fact that an ordinary bad date, who just misbehaves at the dance, can create a parallel sense of nastiness. And make no mistake about it, Lola becomes a fully developed character in her own right as, during her deranged behavior, she reveals the mentality of a warped nerdy girl filled with jealousy and rage. Byrne shows he is as good at writing as he is at action.

The acting is uniformly good, and Simon Chapman's cinematography deserves much credit for creating the bright hues on a limited budget. Byrne is a talented young man, and Hollywood reportedly is after him. Samuels has a part in the third Twilight film.

Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival 2010.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.