THE LOVED ONES

THE LOVED ONES

School Maul

Directed by Sean Byrne
Starring Xavier Samuel, Robin McLeavy, John Brompton, Victoria Thaine

The latest of the new wave of Ozploitation flicks is a strange and nasty little hybrid, a mashup between the early horror films of Wes Craven and the teen dramedies of John Hughes, although the emphasis is well and truly on the former. It should be noted, though, that in this case ‘strange and nasty’ is a compliment; indeed, those two adjectives are a pretty good working definition of what the average horror fan is looking for in their Friday night entertainment.
The plot is perfunctory. Moody teen hunk Brent (Xavier Samuel, last seen in Twilight: Eclipse), although still grieving over his father’s death in a car accident, is gearing up to attend the school ball with his girlfriend Holly (Thaine). Unluckily for our hero, school weirdo Lola (McLeavy) has become fixated on him, and after he rebuffs her advances, her skin-crawlingly creepy father (Brompton) decides to take matters into his own hands, kidnapping Brent and forcing him to attend a school dance just for two. Cue a night of torture, mutilation, trepanation, and the occasional slow dance under the disco ball.
The fundamentally broken family unit is a staple of horror cinema, and in Lola and her eager-to-please father writer/director Byrne has created a classic pairing. With his fixed grin and querulous voice, Brompton is fantastic as the single father who’ll do anything for his little girl, right up to nailing her would-be paramour’s feet to the floor with kitchen knives. He’s a type we’ve seen before, the uncultured country father, not too bright but keen to help, and it’s the way this inherent need to please strays over the line into violence and insanity that makes him fascinating.
The real star, however, is McLeavy’s Lola. Switching from shy and awkward to petulant and demanding at the drop of hat, her monstrosity comes from her incredible sense of entitlement. Although her father commits most of the film’s atrocities, it’s always at the behest of his spoilt little girl, and when, later in the film, Lola herself turns her hand to violence, she proves to be just as brutal and sadistic as her doting daddy.
Although the central psychos are excellent, the film is not flawless. There’s an entire subplot involving the beta couple of Brent’s friend Sac (Richard Wilson) and troubled goth girl Mia (Jessica McNamee) that could be jettisoned completely without losing anything vital to the film; and nominal hero Brent’s depression and grief over his father is a little too on the nose at the times; and, all up, the film isn’t the Aussie horror masterpiece that many festival reports would have us believe. What The Loved Ones is, however, is a taut and effective horror movie with a simple yet intriguing central premise. Anyone with an appreciation for innovative torture, lashings of blood, and the other finer things in life will find something to enjoy here.

_TRAVIS JOHNSON