All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane has been on the shelf for a long time. It's made the rounds at some film festivals, been released on DVD in region 2, but as of the writing of this review it's still in limbo in the US. The reasons for this seem somewhat questionable since numerous horror films of lesser quality have hit theaters or DVD since 2006.

Mandy Lane is the quiet, beautiful girl that all the boys want to score with; so far none have succeeded. The in crowd at school that wants Mandy to join them, but without her nerdy best friend trailing along. This leads to some bad-natured roughhousing at a party, and from there to a tragic incident where a drunken boy showing off in front of Mandy accidentally dies.

None of this dissuades the boys at school from pursuing Mandy; likes moths to the flame, they continue to follow her around. Not that she shows any interest. 9 months after the death, Mandy has made new friends with the more popular crowd and agreed to go to a weekend party at one boy's ranch.

The ranch party is exactly what you'd expect from both teenagers and this kind of horror movie; the teens are looking to get drunk, do some drugs, and have sex. Except for Mandy, who is out of place with the crowd but seems content to drift along while each of the boys takes a shot at getting with her. As the viewer you know it's only a matter of time before the bodies begin to pile up, but who's doing the killing?

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is better than your average slasher flick, but not by leaps and bounds. Despite a script that starts out interesting it quickly becomes mired in genre cliche. It has pretty decent performances for a movie of this sort, and it's shot well. The end didn't precisely surprise me—in fact it turned out exactly the way I'd expected, but it had enough red herrings to confuse me slightly. And while I prefer that a movie not hold the viewer's hand spending vast amounts of time explaining things, the ending of this movie could really have used a little more background explanation.

Mandy Lane is worth watching if you're a horror fan who'd like to see a traditional slasher flick that's executed better than usual. It doesn't bring anything new or particularly interesting to the genre, but it does the same old thing well. It's certainly far more deserving of a release (either to theaters or DVD) than recent lousy remakes like One Missed Call, Day of the Dead, and Prom Night.