The Loved Ones (2009)

Adolescence, that romanticized period of great suffering, seems like the most natural point of entry for the torture porn film. Having seen 2009’s Australian import, The Loved Ones, I’m left wondering what took so long. Teenagers make for great fictional fodder, and there’s no kind of film that can depict suffering of any sort better than torture porn. The result is a wholly original take on a typical, standard horror story.

Writer/director Sean Byrne’s debut film follows main character Brent Mitchell (Xavier Samuel) as he attempts to deal with the guilt of killing his father in a car accident. Brent’s ways of dealing with that guilt are as misguided as you would expect from an adolescent. He smokes weed, cuts himself with a razor, and ponders suicide. His lone source of hope is his girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thane). One day at school, fellow classmate Lola Stone (Robin McLeavy) asks Brent to prom, and he politely refuses because he’s already planning on going with his girlfriend. It’s quite a nice rejection, and there’s no reason to think Lola would take offense. However, what Brent, and the entire town, doesn’t know, is that Lola and her father, Daddy Stone (John Brumpton), are about as sane as Leatherface’s parents. Brent goes for a walk on the day of the dance, is attacked as he listens to music, and finds himself being held captive in the home of the Stones. From that point on, the film decidedly earns its torture porn label.

Instead of simply showing the audience Brent’s ordeal with Lola and her father, which ends up being about as standard a torture porn trope as you could find, Byrne juxtaposes the happenings with some good, old-fashioned, grounded in reality, teenage angst. Brent’s best pal Jamie (Richard Wilson) ends up going to the dance with his dream girl, the goth Mia (Jessica McNamee). It’s this plot line, which in a lesser filmmaker’s hands would feel superfluous and unrelated, that manages to give the film a little more substance than one would initially expect. I’ll spare the details since the movie reveals them slowly, but it’s fair to call Mia one psychologically fucked up chick. Like Brent, she’s incapable of healthily dealing with her problems, and resorts to drinking, drugs, and fucking to release her pain. Some might fault the film for how open ended it leaves this plot line, but any sort of resolution would be forced and condescending. Mia’s predicament isn’t something that just gets better. We end up getting a full picture of who Mia is, and that’s all that’s necessary for the film since her character exists as a point of contrast. If anything, the film ties itself together a little too neatly. Everything and everyone is connected. The point, I guess, is to show the impact Lola and her father’s serial killings have had on everyone in the town, but it doesn’t really feel important. We’re drawn to the film because of the teenagers, and anything else just feels unnecessary.

The real strength of the movie is the aforementioned teenage characters. Byrne manages to create a handful of characters that are fairly representative of the teenage experience in a running time of less than 90 minutes. They may be broadly drawn, but I’d argue that most teenagers are anyway. The people they are aren’t exactly people everyone knew as a teenager, but they’re close enough. The film creates a hyper stylized, incredibly violent version of teenage life. Brent’s the loner who does what he wants; Lola’s the spoiled rotten brat whose parents cow-towed to her every wish; Holly’s the popular, pretty girl; Mia’s the goth chick with issues; and Jamie is the typical male friend who’s only looking to get laid. The only difference is in this world, the princess gets to lobotomize her crushes so she can keep them forever and torture them the way she feels tortured.

The film’s concerns with the uniqueness of being a teen isn’t quite The Breakfast Club (it’s about a step or two down in terms of insight), but it counteracts that with gory, grisly violence and a very dark sense of humor. Unlike most torture porn movies, The Loved Ones doesn’t bog itself down with simply trying to gross its audience out. The requisite gore and violence is certainly present, but it strives for a bit more, and that’s always a worthy aim. Those looking for a straight torture porn movie in the vein of the Saw films might not be happy with Byrne’s film, and art-house audiences might find its bluntness off-putting. It’s destined to be a cult film once it finds itself an audience.