I had high hopes for Love Lies Bleeding, and unfortunately, this film falls very short of an A24 classic.
I, like many others, like to keep an eye out for whatever A24 is distributing or involved in and was excited for Love Lies Bleeding (2024). A24 seems to have their pulse on the forefront of independent horror, crime, thrillers, and comedy films. Love Lies Bleeding (2024) looked like an interesting thriller piece and a gritty look at American crime. But it turned out to be very one-note for me and left a sour taste in my mouth. I want to get Love Lies Bleeding (2024) out of my head, as I feel like it was almost a waste of my time.
It’s a little different when you have high expectations for a film and it doesn’t reach them at all, compared to when you watch something you know you’re not going to like and you just kind of get through it or it is better than expected. Love Lies Bleeding (2024) disappointed me, and the more I thought about it, the more I’d come to that conclusion.
Some of the good in Love Lies Bleeding (2024) is the casting, as I liked Kathy M. O’Brian as Jackie. I don’t think the material she was given was perfect at times, but at the same time, she did a pretty good job with what she was given. Kristen Stewart was our lead, Lou did well.
I think Ed Harris stole the show with his performance as Lou Sr. Ed Harris has a way of creating menacing characters, and he did that in Love Lies Bleeding (2024). He felt like a character out of a Grand Theft Auto game. And I mean that in the best way, because Grand Theft Auto characters are extremely memorable. Dave Franco made a surprising appearance in this film, and his little role is pretty good. So the acting isn’t the worst part of Love Lies Bleeding (2024) or even really a weak suit.
For me, a lot of the complaints come from the story. I don’t want to go into a lot of spoilers because Love Lies Bleeding (2024) doesn’t really advertise them. But the film takes an interesting psychedelic turn with drug use, which is not done right in my eyes. I feel like when you discuss drug use in a film, you kind of have to show the consequences of it. In the film, there are consequences, but by the end of the film, I feel like the characters didn’t learn from them.
Love Lies Bleeding (2024) also deals with murder a lot, and it doesn’t seem to tell us anything about it that we didn’t already know. It’s pretty one-note by the end of the film, and I was extremely disappointed. I think unless you’re doing an over-the-top action movie, you should probably address when someone is murdered, the actions behind it, and the psychic behind it. A great piece of media that goes into that is Vinland Saga. There are many others but Vinland Saga covers it perfectly. I understand this film might be going for that b-movie feel, but it clashes with this artistic vibe that feels like it has something to say and it doesn’t work.
Love Lies Bleeding (2024) seemed to be super gritty, so it wasn’t the most pretty to look at. That’s not a bad thing because we need our fair share of gross films to help us get into a gross world. But that doesn’t help this movie, as I don’t think I’ll ever watch it again. Some might like this film as time goes on like many A24 films.
With that being said, Love Lies Bleeding (2024) is not for the faint of heart, as it has some extremely gory and gross scenes. Unfortunately, when you go that route, I feel like you need to have a good reason, and I guess this film’s reason is to be as gritty as possible. But it doesn’t seem very artistic. It just comes off as another film about people killing people for various reasons. Something you see all the time in any generic violent movie.
Maybe it’s my ideals clashing with Love Lies Bleeding (2024) , but I feel like once again, when people are getting murdered, there needs to be a lot more that goes into it. If they’re going to go the route of people not feeling bad for the people they are killing, they should probably do some kind of serial killer-type thing where the person is insane. But for a couple of the characters in Love Lies Bleeding (2024) who do murder people, it seems that they just kind of don’t have an issue with it. At least, that’s what I thought and got from the movie.
If I were to explain the film beat by beat with each scene, some of them would not make sense at all if I were to say what happened. And not in an artistic way, as you can interpret it as something, but in a cliché way. The worst thing an artist can do is be cliché. I think a lot of artists would rather just be bad than cliché, because that means that they’re trying super hard for something that they can’t reach. Instead of not trying hard at all and making something that’s bad like Madame Web.
In a world where streaming allows us to see all kinds of films, we can see more independent films that will take more risks and do different things. A24 does a great job of selecting independent directors and filmmakers to create unique films. Unfortunately, this film feels like it’s something that would never be made by Hollywood for a bad reason, not a good reason.
I will say the first 20 minutes or so of Love Lies Bleeding (2024) when we see the two main characters fall in love, seem to be pretty well written. That was before we got to the crime aspect of the film. It seemed to have an interesting ying and yang between the two characters. A couple of other people mentioned in their reviews that the film starts pretty well but goes downhill very fast. That is exactly how I felt as well. This kind of film has strange left turns. It turns off audiences a lot.
I seem to gravitate towards these kinds of movies, and I like to give them a chance, but I really couldn’t support this one. I tried, and I tried to make myself like this during the film, but it kept doing things I predicted and kept doing things I did not like. The subject matter was not handled right, and I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. And that’s not a good thing; I could care less about the characters.
I know some of them we’re not supposed to care about, but at the same time, I feel like we are supposed to feel a little bit of sympathy for our two leads. Instead, I dislike them.
To end on one more positive note about the film, the song they played during the credits was a nice touch: “Whisper” by Martin Rev. And that goes for the rest of the film, as the music was fairly good. But that is, sadly, one of the few things I liked about Love Lies Bleeding (2024) .
