All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

The film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is about a girl named Mandy Lane that is a popular outsider. A group of high-school kids invite Mandy Lane who is perceived as a good girl to a weekend party on a secluded ranch. All three of the boys are interested in sleeping with Mandy, as she is known as the virgin. While partying is going on, the number of characters seem to be droping mysteriously  throughout the movie, later to be known as Emmett. Emmett is Mandy's Ex best friend who is madly in love with her and would do anything for. This film shows many characteristics that follows the stereotypical slasher film, seems to have a killer that is jealous and desires some type of love or affection from Mandy. At the end of the film we are shown that Emmett has done everything for Mandy, even brought the pills for them both to take as there suicide pact, last minute Mandy changes her mind kills Emmett and goes to save Garth.

The film shows the characters and how they fit into the stereotypical gender roles that teenagers fit into along with the slasher films. The two girls Marlin and Chloe, both are very rude and bigoted. Marlin shows Chloe and Mandy her new belly button ring and the first thing said by Chloe is that she is chubby and wouldn't be able to show it off to anyone. Marlin is "boy stir crazy" for Jake, she is taking the trip to the ranch as an opportunity to finally show Jake that she is the one for her. The boys also follow a certain gender role as well, the only thing that seems to have been going through their mind was they are going to get laid the whole trip. They talk about the girls like they are merchandise being sold, Red making a statement saying " There she is boys, Mandy Lane. Untouched, pure, Since the dawn of junior year men have tried to possess her, and to date all have failed. Some even died in their reckless pursuit of this angel". Then later in his conversation with his boys he made a comment saying that  he calls "first dibs". Which only later results in a fight between the men of how it is not fair she gets her first. This does not only portray the male gender roles, it does not only prove the fact that men are perceived to only think or want is sex, having no respect for women whatsoever.

The death of the characters throughout the film also follows a specific pattern in slasher films. The first character to die is Marlin, her killer uses the barrel of a shotgun to suffocate her than break her jaw, leading to a slow and painful death. The next to die is Jake, he goes looking around for Mandy while finding her little does he know that the Emmett is right behind him and shoots him in the head, leading to a fast and not painful death. The next character to die is Bird, he runs after the thinking that Jake is driving the truck to only be shocked to see Emmett in the driver seat. Bird throws Emmett out of the car and asks where all of his friends are and Emmett replies "it doesn't matter, none of us are going to live until tomorrow anyways", then Emmett cuts Bird right in the eyes then follows him to then stab him in the back multiple times until he dies. Chloe is being chased by Emmett in a car running to Mandy thinking she is safe, little did Chloe know that she was going to run right into knife piercing into her heart, leading to her to bleed out very painfully. During the death of Chloe, Mandy holds her and says that she will be okay, that everything is okay, acting like a mother figure to her. All of this being said I would like to point out the fact that women seem to have the most revealing and painful deaths, while the males deaths are quick and not painful, the male characters feel as though it is a fight for masculinity to feel the satisfaction of killing the other, in every slasher film the killer is usually a male which leads to them having to fight for their strength or masculinity. Another thing that should be pointed out is the choice of weapons Emmett chose to use for the killings. Emmett killed each character with either a gun or a knife, which acts like the phallus to the human body, which in slasher films gives the killer satisfaction. During Marlins death the barrel of the shotgun shoved down her throat, which is important because just before her death she was giving oral sex to Jake, now just proves that in most slasher films the death of the women occur after a sexual activity or connection to having a romantic relationship with an individual.

In the beginning of the film we are introduced to Mandy, who is introduced as an innocent, pure and well desirable girl by many in the film, later to find out that she is the final girl in the film. According to Clover's writing, in slasher films the final girl is introduced as intelligent, watchful levelheaded and is the first to know or sense that something is wrong. Throughout slasher films the final girl is described as a distressed female, who did not die, who is the survivor, the one who usually encounters mutilated bodies of her friends, who is being chased, wounded or we see scream. Mandy is the final girl in this film but doesn't show any of the characteristics except the fact that she survived. Throughout the film her innocent is used to manipulate the characters, and the audience to making us think she is a victim, but really is involved with the horrors that took place at the ranch.

This film uses the standard gender roles played by characters in slasher films, from the usage of the weapons and the meaning behind them to the twist of the final girl being involved in the horror in the film. The men were portrayed as sexist and shown to have no respect towards women, as the females were portrayed as whores only caring about themselves, but also shown that they were helpless throughout the film, they didn't put up much of a fight during their deaths. Even though this film had twists throughout it, there are still original slasher film gender roles and story line written all in the script.

Clover, Carol. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film”. Representations, No. 20, Special Issue: Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy (Autumn, 1987), pp. 187-228, University of California Press (10.2307/2928507), 02-10-2017 13:11 UTC.