One of the big casualties of the 2020 pandemic was the horror movie Saint Maud, whose release was delayed by almost a full year. Despite its delay, the film was still a hit with fans, and many have been waiting even more patiently to see what writer/director Rose Glass would do next. That wait is over. Her newest movie, Love Lies Bleeding, is here.
Set in New Mexico in the 1980s, Love Lies Bleeding is about a young woman named Lou (Spencer’s Kristen Stewart) who befriends a female bodybuilder named Jackie (Katy O’Brian from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) who is passing through town on her way to a competition in Las Vegas. The pair strikes up a relationship that leads them to mischief, mayhem, and murder involving Lou’s father (Ed Harris from A History of Violence) and sister (The Neon Demon’s Jena Malone), as well as her sister’s abusive husband (The Disaster Artist’s Dave Franco).
Rose Glass co-wrote the screenplay for Love Lies Bleeding along with London-based Polish filmmaker Weronika Tofilska. For this sophomore effort, Glass makes less of a pure horror movie than Saint Maud, instead choosing to play around in the same pulpy schlock sandbox as the Coen Brothers or Quentin Tarantino. The story deals with a rash of serious subjects from domestic violence to steroid abuse, but mostly, it’s a revenge thriller, violent and brutal, with enough “unintentional” intentional comedy and dark humor to let the viewer come up for air every once in a while. It’s Girl Power Grindhouse – a Thelma and Louise for the next generation.
Like any good crime thriller, there are no sympathetic characters in Love Lies Bleeding. Sure, there are heroes and villains, and there are redemption arcs for both Lou and Jackie, but no one is really “innocent.” Well, maybe Jena Malone’s sister character, but even she allows her abusive situation to continue for far longer than she should, so she inspires more anger and frustration than empathy. There are no black-and-white good and bad guys, just different shades of grey with differing levels of guilt. And that’s what makes the twisting and turning plot so engaging – you never know who is right or wrong, you just know who you’re rooting for.
With Love Lies Bleeding, Kristen Stewart continues piling up gutsy role choices and great performances in her post-Twilight career. Ed Harris is menacing as the evil patriarch and Dave Franco makes the viewer want to punch him in the face as the butthole husband, but the real MVP of the movie is Katy O’Brian. Her ambitious-yet-misguided Jackie is the performance that drives the film, and her lusty chemistry with Stewart sets the screen ablaze. O’Brian is part action hero and part dramatic thespian, making Jackie the most layered character in a film full of layered characters.
And then, there’s the ending. Without spoiling anything, if the ending of Saint Maud left people scratching their heads, the ending of Love Lies Bleeding will have them rolling on the floor in stitches. Both endings make the audience question the reality of everything that they have just seen and force them to wonder exactly whose version of events they’ve been exposed to, but the surreal climactic scene in Love Lies Bleeding borders on the absurd. This ending will be analyzed and scrutinized, and still will leave people perplexed.
To say that Love Lies Bleeding is a less subtle movie than Saint Maud would be an understatement. But with her second feature, Rose Glass proves herself to be a filmmaker whose skill and talent are rivaled only by her creativity and versatility. She remains one to watch, and fans will again wait with bated breath for whatever she does next.
GRADE: A
MPAA Rating: R for violence, language throughout, grisly images, drug use, nudity, and sexual content
Release Date: March 15, 2024
Running Time: 1 hour 44 minutes
Studio: A24
