Rating: R | Runtime: 104 minutes
Release Date: March 8th, 2024 (USA) / May 3rd, 2024 (UK)
Studio: Lionsgate / A24
Director(s): Rose Glass
Writer(s): Rose Glass & Weronika Tofilska

I prefer to know my own strength.

Writer/director Rose Glass is proving to be a name you shouldn’t ignore. I may not have outright loved either of her features, but both are legitimately unforgettable works of singular vision. Saint Maud was a very good debut capped off by a genuinely great ending and Love Lies Bleeding arrives as a great movie that just can’t quite stick its landing. While it delivers a perfect narrative conclusion, I must question its package considering its darkly surreal happily ever after mustn’t be so outlandishly drawn. Glass (and co-writer Weronika Tofilska) seems to want to recapture the lightning in a bottle of the duality born from Saint Maud’s finale. It just doesn’t quite work here.

The road there is fantastic, though, with an affecting romance and neo-noir sensibilities. Lou (Kristen Stewart) is at its center, stuck working a dead-end job in a dead-end town so as not to leave her sister (Jena Malone’s Beth) alone. We see the bruises on Beth’s face the first time we meet her and hear the animosity in Lou’s reaction to an FBI agent asking about her father (Ed Harris’s Lou Sr.). These sisters cope with the cesspool of toxic masculinity, juiced muscles, and gunpowder that surrounds them very differently and, with their mother gone, Lou takes it upon herself to protect Beth from the men in their life.

That’s when Jackie (Katy O’Brian) arrives. A woman who’s familiar with living a dead-end life herself, she’s chosen escape. Looking to compete in a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas, Jackie decides to stop in this town and make some money while putting in her final preparations. While a job is supplied by Dave Franco’s sleazeball JJ, the local gym is provided by Lou. Cue a whirlwind love affair wherein Lou also starts provides a place to stay … and steroids. Just as she’s listening to self-help cassettes explaining how cigarettes are poison in order to quit smoking, Lou begins pushing a different substance on her new beau.

The stage is therefore set for chaos once Lou’s criminal past inevitably collides with Jackie’s rage-fueled present. One crime leads to another until tough truths and anxiety-riddled plans threaten the couple’s bond. And soon the lines between complicity and responsibility blur. Has Jackie been using Lou and her family? Has Lou Sr. been using her? Has Lou? Add the looming FBI presence with the nosy infatuation of Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) and the walls start to close faster and faster. Suddenly the woman who seemed in control (Jackie) isn’t and the one who seemed trapped (Lou) is fully in command for, perhaps, the first time ever.

Stewart and O’Brian are both excellent in these roles. The romance is palpable, but so too is the impending doom once guilt and fear set in. Glass does well to color things with a nightmarish sheen via close-up shots of Jackie’s muscles expanding a la The Hulk and some truly wild dream sequences, but there’s also a really fun strain of black humor throughout—mostly on behalf of Lou constantly being put out and made to solve crazy problems for other people. That tonal path may take over too much for my taste by the end, but I can’t deny the climax isn’t memorable as a result. Glass isn’t making mainstream films. She’s taking big swings and I hope she never stops.

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(L-R) Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart in LOVE LIES BLEEDING; courtesy of A24. Credit: Anna Kooris.