Love Lies Bleeding-A Wonderfully Grotesque Genre Blend

Love Lies Bleeding blends so many genres at once. At times, the film is a strange, off-kilter love story abundant in lust and intimacy. That love story leads directly into a brutal, bloody crime story. The film interweaves its love and crime stories with hallucinogenic sequences of surrealist imagery that linger on the look and sound of human muscle, adding a body horror element to the film. What makes the film so captivating is how it weaves in and out its various genres to create a genre mash-up that feels unique to itself. The film's first act is sparing in revealing information regarding each character's relationship with each other, making for a movie where so much of the tension stems from when and how it shows that each character and their relationship with the people around them isn't as they seem. What follows is a surprisingly moving story of two individuals whose love and genuine human connection help get them through the brutality of their lives.

The imagery, in its focus on bugs and the human body, all captured with a dark, neon-drenched look, and combined with the moments of body horror, creates a look that's so satisfyingly dark and nasty in an almost Cronebergian way. Director Rose Glass captures the story with a gratifying sense of visual ingenuity. The film makes great use of close-ups, getting the viewer tight and close with these characters, which sells the intimacy of Lou and Jackie's relationship and the tension or intentionally disorienting feel of certain moments. Tracking and aerial shots also add a pleasing visual flair to the film.

The film's pacing isn't always the greatest. Much of the second act feels meandering, dragging out Lou and Jackie as they attempt to cover up their first crime. Some surrealist imagery at the end also didn't quite work for me. While the rest of the imagery felt contextualized as hallucinations, the one at the end felt too surreal and didn't fit the film's gritter, somewhat grounded tone.

Even with my issues with the film Love Lies Bleeding, it blends so many different genres and tones to make a film that's so wonderfully unique and singular. What begins as a love story becomes a wonderfully dark, twisted crime story filled with dark humor, surreal hallucinations, and a wonderfully grotesque fascination with the human body. In the end, the film spins itself back towards its love story in a surprisingly touching way to make a film that, despite all the dark grotesqueries of its story, has a captivating and moving love story at its emotional center.

Now showing in theaters starting March 8, 2024