Alpha Dog star Amber Heard is the centre of lecherous attentions in this smart, hormonally drenched, teen horror date movie. Heavily signified as a ‘good girl’, she returns to her Texan high school after the summer hols only to find that, to borrow some appalling grammar, she’s “got hot.” Overnight, she’s the talk of the locker room and the belle of the ball. As the ogling spills over into an after-school pool party, we realise the extent of her siren powers when, encouraged by her best friend, a big dumb jock jumps off a roof to impress her, killing himself in the process.
Nine months later, she’s still both chaste and chased when she’s finally persuaded to join two promiscuous girls and three guys – all diehard Mandy fans – for a weekend away at a remote ranch. Somehow, between the amorous schemes, the catty exchanges, the hard liquor and the soft drugs, the gang fail to notice that they’re being brutally picked off by an unseen psychopath.
The gorgeously titled All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is the first feature from director Jonathan Levine, though you’d never know it. Schooled in his milieu and armed with a whipsmart screenplay by Jacob Forman (another first timer), Mr. Levine, like Kevin Williamson before him, sure knows his way around a Final Girl and a plot twist. He lures the unsuspecting viewer with musical montages that wouldn’t look out of place in The O.C. He successfully suggests the jaded, deadened teeniverse that Larry Clark and Gus Van Sant sought to exploit in Bully and Elephant.
Long before the killing starts in earnest we’re swept up by eating disorders, body image crises and the Darwinian rules of the playground. All the boys may love Mandy Lane but girls will find her equally hard to resist.