Say That You Love Me - ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE (2006)

I remember that time back in school when you return to lessons after a holiday only for your peers to find you have transformed from an awkward ugly duckling in to a sexy swan.  Okay firstly, bad imagery, nobody wants to think about sexy swans.  Secondly, that never happened to me, but I did witness it happen to other lucky biatches.  Suddenly all the boys and girls either want them or want to be them.  Then they want to kill them.

Mandy Lane (Amber Heard, Zombieland, The Stepfather) has done just that; she is now a hot and voluptuous teenager who can command the attention of anyone she wants.  She's modest too, and doesn't seem to be comfortable with all this new attention.  She even has the obligatory geeky male best friend Emmet (Michael Welch, Day of the Dead, Twilight) who is also in love with her.  After a serious bout of jealousy leads Emmet to cause a fatal accident at a party, the two friends go their separate ways, with Mandy blossoming further in the bosom of her new high school hierarchy.

Mandy is invited to a house party at a secluded ranch, where all the boys are after her.  On the first night they drink and take drugs and basically begin the perfect teen horror slasher recipe, leaving themselves vulnerable to what lurks outside in the dark.  Eventually, as you would expect, the other members of the group start to die in truly gruesome methods and the perpetrator is revealed early on.  As a viewer you think that was a bad move, but no, the best is still yet to come.

Apart from a few injury continuity issues (one minute someones face is falling off, the next minute, their face has fallen back on) I don't have a bad word to say about this film.  The colour wash is like a warm bubble bath for your eyes.  I know the cast is almost exclusively teenagers but they are just as credible as any characters in Stand By Me or The Virgin Suicides for example.  They have that dreamy quality to them that could never be confused with a trashy flick.  A tiny bit contrived, yes, but easy on the eye and very smile making.  Director Jonathan Levine's expert touch is complemented by the closing scene's soundtrack of Bobby Vinton's Sealed with a Kiss.

A little Texas Chainsaw in the cinematography, the twist at the end was so surprising it only occurred to me a fraction of a second before the reveal, when I was overwhelmed by both the sadness and excitement you only rarely get in films after you develop an affinity for the victim.  You are them and it is your heart that's beating not quite fast enough to kill you before the killer does.  All The Boys Love... is a modern study of a beautiful and classy 1970's horror that will leave you smiling as though you have something to hide.