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Lovers Lane (2000)

DVD Cover (First Look Home Entertainment)
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Overall Rating 41%
Overall Rating
Ranked #8,159
...out of 20,319 movies
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A man with a hook for a hand escapes from a mental institution to go after the children of his previous victims. --TMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: February 12, 2008
It really saddens me to say it, but the glory days of fun slasher films are long gone. They had a good run - throughout most of the seventies and eighties - and thus we are ensured plenty of classics to fall back on when the mood strikes, but it just makes me a sad man to know that we're probably never going to see a run like that again. Some of you may point to movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer as carrying on the tradition, but let's get one thing straight here: those two movies and the flood of imitations that followed, love them or hate them, simply weren't the same. This isn't a knock on those films, don't get me wrong; some of them were actually pretty good in their own little ways, but bona fide slasher flicks? I think not. Moving onwards, tonight's film just so happens to be one of those imitators, and truth be told, the only reason I even bothered with it was because there's a certain little holiday coming up in a couple of days. I had low expectations going in, but after sitting through this... well, let's just say that I've found a new hatred for Valentine's Day.

In the typical mid-nineties style of slasher flicks, the storyline for this one is overly complicated when one considers that the main gist is "stupid teenagers get picked off one by one courtesy of a masked madman." It all begins a mere thirteen years ago, when a man and a woman decided to head on out to Lovers Lane and "celebrate" Valentine's Day with a little bumping and grinding. Showing up to ruin their fun is the aforementioned masked madman, and in order to set himself apart from the hordes of other masked madmen, this particular fellow sports a metal hook in place of his left hand. Gee, I've never seen this one before...

Moving ahead in time, we catch up with both Sheriff Tom Anderson (Matt Riedy) and school principal Penny Lamson (Riley Smith), a pair of people who have some sort of animosity towards one another. Why? It all comes together in the big twist, so no spoilers here. We also meet their offspring, those two lovable scamps known as Mandy (Erin J. Dean) and Michael (Riley Smith), and we learn that they too are a pair of people with some sort of animosity towards one another. Why? It all comes together in the big twist, so no spoilers here. Finally, we learn that the hook-handed serial killer had been committed to the local mental institution after carrying out his grisly work and that he is under the care of Dr. Jack Grefe (Richard Sanders), a fellow who just so happens to be Tom's brother and who also has an unhealthy obsession with Penny. Why? It all comes together in the big twist, so no spoilers here. Once again, the plot gets more and more complicated as things move along, but what it basically boils down to is that Mandy, Michael, and a host of their friends head out for a party, Mr. Hook breaks out of the asylum, and we've got ourselves a shell of a slasher flick. Anna Faris appears here in a minor role, just a few months before she would go on to make a name for herself by parodying the very same genre in Scary Movie.

Observant readers will notice that I referenced Scream above and compared the two films, but make no mistake about it: the two movies have nothing in common with one another besides the fact that they're both "modern" slashers (for the time) and one is a cheap imitation of the other. Lovers Lane aims to be more of a straightforward slasher flick complete with all of the clichés that defined the genre: the partying teens, the numerous red herrings, the ominous music that builds up to nothing, multiple uses of the old "animal jumps out at the most inopportune time in a valiant effort to scare the audience", and of course, the final twist that makes no sort of logical sense. Yes, all of the ingredients are here, but the problem is that the filmmakers seemed to use these annoying clichés as much as possible while ignoring the things that actually made these films work. Oh, and as an added insult to injury, this film is not comparable to Scream in the sense that it's a self-referential, "poke fun at the genre" type of film; no sir, these filmmakers were apparently dead serious with this film, and it's pretty obvious that they thought that they were making an original classic here. They didn't.

The problems with the film are numerous, and honestly, there's too many to write about here. The most glaring error of the entire experience is the giant insult to the viewer's intelligence as we get through the running time. It seemed as though the filmmakers thought that they were being fresh and innovative here, when in all actuality, they were simply ripping off countless films that came before it. It almost seemed like a parody, as one could easily make a "spot the ripoff" drinking game and be hammered before the killer even breaks out of the asylum. The worst part about all of this is that, again, it's done in all seriousness - one would almost think that the filmmakers believed that they were being genuinely innovative with the "ominous music builds up to a cat jumping out and screeching" gag. This sort of thing repeats over and over again as the film progresses, and as a fan of the genre, it's downright embarrassing.

What else - how about the numerous illogical twists that may have looked good on paper, but came off as a contrived and confusing mess on the screen? To be fair, it wasn't as confusing after the survivors spelled it out for us when all was said and done, and the confusion may have been due to the awful lighting used throughout the film. There were times when I simply had no clue as to who was doing what, so this problem may have been overcome with an additional lightbulb or two on the set. It wasn't though, and hence, my complaint. Unfortunately, while pieces of the storyline may have been easier to decipher with additional lighting, nothing else would have benefited from it as the gore, kills, gratuitous nudity, and yes, even the tension are kept to a bare minimum. I've said it before and I'll undoubtedly say it again, but people watch these films for all of the aforementioned items, not a badly acted drama that just so happens to involve a serial killer.

So, in conclusion: what does Lovers Lane offer for your buck? You get Anna Faris running around in a cheerleader outfit throughout the entire thing, a few jokes that I have to admit were kind of funny, and... well, not much else. For that, I'm going to have to slap down the "Avoid" label. 2/10.
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