All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) [REVIEW]

One of the movies that I’m most excited for this year is You’re Next, which is coming out in August. I have to wait until August to see that shit?! DAMN! I follow the producer of that movie on Twitter, and another movie he produced is All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. In addition to that movie being in my head from reading it in his Twitter bio, I feel like I’ve heard relatively decent stuff about this movie. I’d previously seen Amber Heard, who plays Mandy Lane, in Drive Angry, which I didn’t really like, and in The Ward, which was tolerable. She also had a small part in Pineapple Express, and that movie is AWESOME. Remember the part where…oh nevermind, it’s way too silly for me to try to type out! HAHAHAHA! I’m thinking of it now though, don’t you worry. It seems as though there’s a following around Amber Heard where people argue that she is the most attractive woman in the world, but that might also just be me confusing people in real life with the characters in this movie. After all, the movie claims that ALL of the boys love her. That’s a lot of boys. It’s also a lot of pressure on her to be really appealing in this movie, so don’t fuck things up Amber. Also, I’m not going to spoil the ending, don’t worry. A lot of the stuff up until the ending, yeah, but not everything. Good luck!

WHY DOES YOUR HAIR ALWAYS LOOK LIKE A RAT’S NEST?!

Some of the older kids in high school decide to invite Mandy Lane and their pool party because apparently she got hot over the summer. Mandy drags one of her guy friends along to the party, and while at the party, one guy is so desperate to impress her that he jumps off of a roof and into a pool, only to crack his head open and die. Fast forward to the end of that school year and a party where people are celebrating the beginning of summer, and Many has been invited to yet another party out in the middle of nowhere at a kid’s parent’s ranch house. The legend of a guy willing to die to be with her has given her a reputation, so all the guys on the trip are doing their best to woo her. The party itself is a typical high school party where everyone’s getting drunk and trying to do each other. As party people slowly leave the rest of the group to get blowjobs and stuff, we see that someone is killing off people at this party. At first it’s just one by one, but eventually this killer targets the four remaining party attendees in the house. Two sneak away, leaving only Mandy and the guy who watches over the ranch behind. The two who leave the ranch don’t make it all that far, and when the killer comes back to do away with Mandy, it ends up being the kid who Mandy was friends with in the beginning of the movie who encouraged the guy in the beginning to jump to impress her. When the two confront one another, we learn that–ya know what? I’m going to leave it right there. The ending was something that took me relatively by surprise and it was different enough than what I was anticipating to make the story more interesting.

I’m no gun dude but I feel like you’re NOT supposed to hold it with your thumb over the explode-y part.

We’ve seen plenty of comedies about high school boys doing whatever it takes to get a chance with the prettiest girl in school, but I hadn’t necessarily something like this before. There are plenty of themes and moments that remind me of the motives of the killers in the Scream franchise, as well as the look of the film and the violence shown reminded me of elements of The Loved Ones (which, yes, came out after this movie), but this came out before that did. At its core, the plot is about people in a house getting killed off by an unknown intruder, so I’d say that it classifies as a “home invasion” horror film. The problem with home invasion films is that it’s such a specific subgenre of horror that there isn’t much originality that can be shown, and the same goes for this movie. All of the characters are annoying, some of the violence is okay, but it’s still just a bunch of people in a house getting attacked. The only redeeming factor of this movie would be the twists and turns it took towards the end, and the lack of information as to the motivations and the ambiguity of the ending made it more interesting to me. Granted, as I said, it’s still a home invasion movie, but it did manage to surprise me at the end, so I’d say it’s worth checking out if you like that subgenre of horror films.

Wolfman Moon Scale