All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (Slasher film Blog)

 
The film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane has all the makings of a predictable, stereotypical slasher film, or so it seems. It follows a group of 6 high school students who spend a weekend at a Ranch, almost completely unsupervised aside from the ranch hand, Garth. All three of the boys are interesting in sleeping with Mandy, who is a widely desired virgin. Group members slowly start mysteriously disappearing as we get to see them murdered by a callous killer, who is revealed to be Emmett. Emmett is Mandy's ex-best friend who is in love with her. The film appears to be a typical depiction of a killer driven simply by jealousy and sexual frustration, but in one of the final scenes, we see Mandy herself stab the only other surviving girl, Chloe. As it turns out, Mandy was in on the killings and had agreed to a suicide pact with Emmett once everyone else had been killed. However, at the last minute, she changes her mind and refuses to take the pills intended to kill her. Her and Emmet engage in a physical struggle and she eventually clubs him to death. She then returns to the wounded Garth and drives away with him, saving his life.

Mandy stabs Chloe while embracing her

From the onset, the film seems like it would conform to the standard narrative of a slasher film, including its typical portrayals of gender stereotypes and archetypal characters. In a lot of ways, the film does exactly that, but the twist ending challenges an important slasher film trope and the gendered discussion surrounding it.

The victims themselves fit into stereotypical gender roles of teenagers that we so often see in this type of film. The two girls, Chloe and Marlin, are incredibly shallow, catty girls. Chloe calls Marlin, who clearly fits the conventional westernized standard of beauty, fat on multiple occasions. Marlin is interested in Jake, and most of her efforts in the film are dedicated to being with him, both romantically and sexually. She is the embodiment of "boy crazy".  These two characters undoubtedly lack substance and intelligence, encompassing the worst of the stereotypical female victims in a slasher film. The portrayal of the male victims in the film is equally problematic. It seems that their only goal for the weekend is to get laid. They talk about the girls as if they are prizes to be won, specifically Mandy. In Red's monologue, he states, "Every guy has tried to possess her, and to date, all have failed". He then goes on to explain that he will be the one to change that and calls "first dibs" on her, which results in an argument between the three about who really gets to have her first. This portrayal of men objectifying women contributes to and confirms the stereotype that all men care/think about is sex, at least regarding women.


The nature of the victim's deaths also aligns with patterns in slasher films. Two of the three men killed by Emmet are done so in mere seconds by a shotgun. The death of Marlin, the only female killed by Emmet, is much grislier and slower. Even Chloe, who is killed by Mandy, dies a much slower death than her male counterparts from a stab wound in the stomach.

Chloe takes her final, labored breaths

There is much more attention and care given to the deaths of female characters. This convention is stuck to even in the longest attack scene of the film. Bird, the second male character to die, is first cut in the eyes and then stabbed in the back while crawling away. When it comes to his final stabs, the camera is shaky, the lighting dim, and the screen flashes black. So, while the struggle leading up to his death is the most explored, his actual demise is hardly viewable by the audience. This leads back to the idea that men are not expected to display the actions that go only with utter horror, like hysterical crying and screaming, that would rationally accompany a brutal murder. Thus, meaning that male deaths must be quick or hidden and women's deaths can be fully explored and exploited.

The types of weapons Emmett chooses to employ in the film prompts an interesting gendered discussion. Weapons are typically phallic in the sense that they penetrate the victim's body. Carol Clover's  Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film discusses how guns are not typically used in slasher films because not all phallic symbols are equal, and there is just something more personal and thus satisfying for the killer in the use of other weapons such as knives, axes, etc. However, Emmet does use guns, as well as knives, to kill. The gun is used to kill in a traditional way when his victims are male, but he also utilizes the weapon in a unique way for his more gruesome, drawn-out killing of a female character. In his first use of a weapon in the film, Emmet shoves the barrel of a shotgun so far down Marlin's throat that it causes enough internal damage to lead to her death. This is significant because preceding the attack, Marlin was performing oral sex on one of the male teens. The similarities in imagery draw attention to the trope in slasher films regarding deaths occurring almost immediately after sexual activity, maybe even implying a causal relationship being a sexual transgressor and dying like many other slasher films have.

Finally, for most of the film, the final girl trope is seemingly followed to a t, until we get to see the twist ending. Mandy's purity is at the forefront of the film, which serves both to differentiate her from her more promiscuous, sexually driven female counterparts and allows male characters to relate to her since it would be difficult to identify with a character that has been penetrated by a male. These two consequences of the final girl's purity (or at least her abstinence throughout the film) are thoroughly explored in Clover's writing and are a commonality among almost all final girl characters. And yes, much like the typical final girl character, Mandy does defeat the killer, but only after the revelation that she was in cahoots with him. This innocence, although still intact sexually, is destroyed by her involvement in the murders. So, while she appears to be a typical final girl character, which in some ways holds true, she rather more appropriately fits into the femme fatal archetype. Her innocence is used to manipulate other characters, and us as the audience, so we would not expect her to be involved in the horrors that occur.

In a lot of ways, this film holds to the standard narrative of a slasher film, but instead of the quintessential final girl character we thought we were seeing, we get a villainous, calculated girl who defies our expectations. Instead of providing a character for male audience members to relate to, as the final girl character is intended to do, this film provides a female character for men to fear. Her chasteness is the very thing that made her so desirable and trustworthy but is what allowed her true intentions to remain hidden.

Reference

Clover, Carol J. “Her Body, Himself.” Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Princeton University Press, 1992.