The Loved Ones (2009)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

We horror fans get used to sitting through a lot of stinkers to find a few goodies every so often. I don't know why I hadn't heard of this one before. Maybe it's because I'm the only person in my group of friends who actually digs horror. The acting is good and the characters are as quirky and intense as they should be. There are some very cringey moments and inappropriate laughs. I quite enjoyed it.

This is about a guy in high school who gets asked to the prom by a girl but he turns her down because he's already seeing someone else. Turns out he turned the wrong girl down.I don't mind gore and I don't mind psycho killer films, though they aren't my favorite horror flavor. I just don't like films that are so, so, slow and drawwwwwn out. I ended up fast forwarding this around the 50-minute mark just to get to the interesting bits and then on to the ending. I couldn't put up with it anymore. There are good bits and funny bits and the acting is okay for the most part, but I found the in-between bits so irritatingly boring and a drawn out snoozefest of artistic and pretentious film-making. In short - it did my head in!I've given this a generous 4/10. I wanted to give it 2/10 but I thought I would have been rating it with my emotions rather than with an objective mind. I honestly think the 6.7 rating for this is far too high, but then, that's only my opinion. A lot of people really seem to like this film.

This started out great, but once it turned into the torture porn, it became too gruesome since there was zero backstory to any of characters. We don't need "explanations" to people's mental illness, but we do some understanding. She was looking for her prince/her dad, didn't find him, so she...tortures guys? Why? Leaves them brainless? Why? Tosses them in her cellar to live like animals? Why? When someone escapes from a maniac, why would you run outside...and climb a tree? Just puzzling and very dumb, even for a horror film. And then when someone has his feet nailed to the floor and a hole drilled in his head...he still has the ability to fight back, walk across a floor, do a full-body pull-up out of a cellar, drive a car (broken, shredded feet pushing the pedal to the metal to the speed of 140 mph)??? And so on.Yeah, just another dumb horror movie but so well made and acted that I hope the hope the director (who just released Devil's Candy which I've no seen) moves more into the thriller/suspense genre. He won't always have to put the silly, implausible stuff I mentioned. He can focus on the characters.

I've seen a lot of horror films and I swear, none so far was disgusting until I decided to watch this movie! It was very dark and hideous, it actually reminded me a bit of Carrie like how the girl Lola was denied from Brent on saying no to being his date for prom. It was very creepy, disturbing and destroying to know that her father got involved in her horrific actions. He must've sexually abused her as a child, no wonder she is messed up but if that was the case, then she should know how deeply wrong that trying to kill someone is cruel. I would love to know this girls back story in the film! Especially her poor mother, god what has they done to her?! I was very surprised to see there was no police in this but only a police car which made no sense to me! At least Brent survived and went back to Holly. Of course, Lola being killed for being a monster...