All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Review first published December 2008

Director: Jonathan Levine (2006)

Starring: Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Whitney Able.

Find it: Every Poundland in England, most likely

All the boys may love Mandy Lane, but as the titular protagonist of this horror movie cum (heh) teen drama, she comes up severely lacking. The biggest problem with All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is that its proverbial emperor is wearing no clothes. Yes, Mandy Lane is an entirely dull, charmless and humourless cut-out Scream Queen. If the whole movie weren’t devoted to her, she’d be just another attractive yet unmemorable horror movie heroine.

Mandy Lane is described on the DVD case as “The OC meets Friday the 13th”, described asthough that's a good thing. For all its contributions to horror cinema (not the least of which is the iconic Jason Voorhees), the original Friday the 13th is a slow, fitfully boring slasher flick which hasn’t aged too well. And the OC is one of the worst television programmes ever to exist, anywhere. Combining the two leaves us with a slow, fitfully boring movie that is full of annoying, boring teenagers trying to get laid, interspersed with whiny American rock montages.

Indeed, this review was a shallow excuse to post nearly-naked pictures of Amber Heard

That’s not to say Mandy Lane doesn’t have its high points. The last fifteen minutes of the film are exceptionally good, thanks to a lack of dialogue and a girl being chased by a car whilst wearing only her undies. The acting is generally decent, if uninspired, and the cinematography is kinda nice, I suppose.

But I’m grasping here. Mandy Lane is let down by everything else. The villain of the piece is unscary, unimposing, uninteresting and a fucking whingy bitch, to top it all. All of the cast (no exceptions whatsoever) are tiresome adverts for (a) contraception (b) murder. I don’t know if you’re supposed to sympathise with any of them, but you don’t. You wish that the bad guy would just hurry up and shotgun them all in the face, before turning the gun on himself.

Overall, I’d say that this sounds like a negative review. That’s because it is. After all the hype I’d heard surrounding Mandy Lane, I’d expected to see something exceptional – or good, at the very least – and not another stupid Friday the 13th knock-off. From start to (nearly) finish, Mandy Lane is a disappointment.