Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a crime, drama,
horror film from 2009, titled The Loved Ones. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
The film opens with Brent, a teenage boy driving through the countryside with his
father Dan in his old car. While teasing each other over the state of the vehicle and their
tastes in music, Dan takes out and lights a cigarette, which Brent disapproves of.
Distracted by his father's actions, Brent doesn't see the person standing in the middle of the road
until Dan calls attention to him. Brent manages to dodge the stranger at the last second,
but the car crashes against a tree, killing Dan. Six months later, we find Brent at school chatting
with his best friend Jamie. They discuss their plans for prom, and Jamie shares some plant and
protection with Brent, encouraging his friend to have fun. The moment is interrupted when a
classmate of theirs and certified goth, Mia, walks in to use her locker, completely ignoring the
presence of both boys next to her. Jamie stares at her, speechless and obviously infatuated.
After Mia leaves, Brent nudges into Jamie following her, and he does exactly that,
only to return seconds later with exciting news: she's accepted his invitation to prom.
Another girl walks in then: Lola, a shy-looking gal, who asks Brent to go to prom with her.
Brent turns her down as politely as he can since he's going with Holly, his girlfriend.
Lola doesn't react, but she's quite obviously not pleased.
After classes are done, Brent leaves the school to meet with Holly at the doors,
who offers a ride because she's finally passed her driving test. Brent asks her to guess who
has invited him to the dance but doesn't offer an answer. They end up making out in Holly's car,
where she keeps asking for the answer to his previous question. He doesn't reply at first,
asking for more layers of clothes to be lost before he replies. When Holly takes off his shirt,
we get to see various scars on Brent's body and a razor blade hanging on his necklace.
Cutting and smoking seem to be the method Brent has chosen to deal with the trauma and guilt
left by his father's death. As their making out becomes more intimate, the couple becomes unaware
of their surroundings and, most importantly, of the fact Lola is outside the car watching them
through the window with increasing irritation. A couple of hours later, Holly drives Brent to
his house and asks him if he should pick him up there for prom, since his mother doesn't know
she's gotten her license yet. It seems Brent and cars are a touchy topic in the household, but he
promises he'll tell her later. He doesn't return Holly's "I love you" but as he gets off the car,
he finally shares with her the answer to his question: it was Lola who invited him to prom.
After Holly is gone, he enters his house and goes directly to his room,
where he is writing some stuff down in the dark while listening to heavy metal music. His mother,
Carla, interrupts him, expressing disapproval when she learns Holly will be driving Brent to prom.
The way she words things makes Brent think she blames him for his father's death.
Feeling angry and frustrated after such a talk, Brent leaves the house together with his dog,
heavy metal music playing on his earbuds and the necklace held so tightly in his fist that it hurts
him. He should be getting ready for prom (as we see Holly doing in her own place) but instead
he enters a rocky, isolated area where he starts climbing a cliff and enjoying the thrill of the
danger. Once he makes it to the top, he smokes while listening to his music, which doesn't allow
him to hear his dog barking angrily at something. His mother tries to reach him on his phone, but he
ignores the call just as a figure approaches him from behind and covers his face with a piece of
cloth, intending to knock him out. Brent tries to fight back with no luck and during the struggle,
his phone is kicked away. The stranger takes a sleeping Brent away on their truck.
Meanwhile, back in town, Jamie is picking Mia up at her house. She doesn't look very excited at
the prospect of prom, only getting more annoyed when her mother and father -a police officer-
ask them to wait so they can take a picture. In another part of town, we see a very excited Holly
arriving at Brent's place, only to be approached by his mother, who a moment ago was at the cliffs,
worriedly looking for her son. She asks Holly if she's seen Brent, but we all know she hasn't.
Night falls. Jamie and Mia are on their way to prom.
Holly and Carla continue to try to reach Brent on the phone to no avail,
but they finally get a clue when they hear whining outside: Brent's dog is back and he's quite hurt.
Carla calls Mia's father, Mr. Valentine, to tell him about what happened, but the cop doesn't take
her seriously at first since Brent disappears for hours often. During this conversation,
his wife shows obvious distress, as if this brought back old, painful memories. Mr. Valentine
changes his mind and takes the problem seriously when Carle tells him their dog had been stabbed.
Said dog is now in Holly's car, who is trying to take him to the vet while Carla talks to
the police officer, but she stops the car when she realized the dog hasn't survived the trip.
Two different cars are followed next: first, Jamie's. He and Mia have made it to prom and
they enter the school ground together, although Mia is obviously not in her best condition. The
other car is the truck that kidnapped Brent, which is stopped in the middle of the road so
its driver can pick up the dead animal. The truck then goes on until they make it to a
house in the middle of the countryside, and when the canvas covering the back is lifted,
the kidnappers are finally revealed: it's Lola and her father, Eric. Lola is worried that Brent
may've died but Eric checks his pulse and assures her he isn't, which makes her bend over Brent
and check herself by putting her ear on his chest and making sounds to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
Lola and Eric enter the house, carrying Brent with them. Lola goes to her very
unsettling and honestly kinda creepy room to update her scrapbook with a picture of Brent.
Her father interrupts her when he brings him a gift: a pink dress and a pair of shoes to match.
He intends to leave while she changes but she asks him to stay so he can tell her how she looks,
which ends up with Eric giving her daughter's undressed very inappropriate glances.
They go to the dining room then, where Brent is waking up to find this strange house decorated to
simulate prom. He's been changed into a suit and tied to a chair in front of table where
other three people -also dressing rather nicely- sit: Lola, Eric and a woman with a round scar on
her forehead that Lola calls Bright Eyes. She seems to be out of it. Eric leaves his seat to
grab Brent so Lola can inject bleach into his throat to destroy his vocal cords. They smile
and tease Brent while doing it, as if it was just a cute little game. After the injection is done,
Lola sits on Brent's lap and asks her dad for a picture. Eric takes it, but asks for a second
one together with Bright Eyes. Lola isn't happy with this idea but accepts anyway. Bright Eyes is
dragged onto Brent's lap as well, and she yells when Lola pulls her hair for the photograph.
Back in the school, Jamie and Mia drink and smoke inside the car while listening to heavy metal,
not joining the party just yet. In contrast to this, we see Lola's house again, where she and
her father are enjoying take-out chicken while Brent tries to undo the knots of the rope that
ties him and Bright Eyes stares at nothing. Lola finds a wishbone in her chicken and offers it
to her dad to make a wish together - Eric wins it and, even when he swears he's made a wish for her,
Lola is not amused. Incredibly annoyed, Lola asks her father who looks prettier: she or Bright Eyes.
Feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place, Eric replies that both look pretty, which makes
Lola even angrier. She starts force-feeding chicken and milk to Bright Eyes and, when she
realized Brent is watching, decides to try to do the same to him while using baby talk. Since Brent
won't open his mouth for her, Eric stands up and goes to pick a hammer that he brings back to the
table as a threat. It works, Brent nods his answer to Lola's "isn't finger-licking good?" question.
He also asks for the toilet, and Lola tells him he'll be allowed to go if he licks her
finger first. He obeys, and the not-so-innocent enjoyment Lola is getting from it causes her
jealous dad to stop them. Brent still needs to go to the toilet (or so he claims, since he's most
likely attempting to escape) but Lola, instead of taking him to the bathroom, chugs a glass of milk
and then holds against his now open zipper so he can pee in it. When Brent doesn't manage to do so,
he gets threatened again for possibly lying: he must pee before Lola counts to ten or her
dad will nail him to the chair with the hammer he used to hurt his dog. Brent pulls it off by nine.
When Lola gets closer and threatens to cut his member, Brent kicks her back as he finally manages
to free his hands from the ropes. He hops his way out of the house, since his legs are still tied,
and hides under Eric's truck to have a hidden place where to cut the remaining rope off with
his razor blade. Eric leaves the house and when he doesn't see Brent around,
hops inside the truck to give him chase. Brent rolls away when the engine is turned on,
believing to be safe now, but Eric pulls back and the truck lights instantly fall on his victim.
Brent runs away and climbs a tree where the truck crashes when Eric goes after him. He walks around
the tree without knowing what to do, but Lola arrives then with a flashlight that allows them
to see Brent clearly among vthe branches. They start throwing rocks at him, laughing and clearly
enjoying his pain, until Brent finally falls, first hitting the truck and then the ground.
They take him back to the house, where he's tied to a chair again. Eric proceeds to hammer a knife
on Brent's feet as punishment for hitting Lola. At first Lola just watches, but then she moves
to sit on Brent's lap, asking him to cry. But he doesn't, which makes her frustrated and angry.
At the same time, Mr Valentine is investigating the cliff and finds
Brent's phone and music player, which he takes back to Carla, who is waiting in her house with
Holly and telling him how Brent believes she blames him for the accident, but she doesn't.
Back with Brent, who's been sitted between Eric and Lola and must endure how she shows him her
creepy scrapbook. It's not just an album of memories, there are pictures of all the
boys they've kidnapped and tortured for their fake proms through the years. One in particular
calls his attention: Timmy Valentine, the only one that managed to escape - Brent immediately
recognizes him: it's the guy that had stood in the middle of the road and caused the accident
that killed his dad. Anger eats him from inside: it's all Eric's and Lola's fault.
Lola tells her dad he's ready to draw on Brent, and after a quick cut to the school to see that
Jaime and Mia still haven't left the car, we see the results of Lola's "drawing": using a fork,
she's carved their initials inside a heart on Brent's chest. Both her and Eric proceed to
throw salt at the wound, making Brent scream and wiggle in pain while they make fun of him for it.
While Brent is being punished, her mom is still in their house, waiting for news. Same for Holly,
who finds the card Brent had prepared for her and contained the words "I love you" that he owed her.
And at school, Jaime and Mia finally decide to leave the car, even if Mia
can barely stand, not feeling very well. It's time for the coronation at Lola's
prom. She's the queen, of course, and Brent is named king. All of them get paper crowns,
even Eric, who takes a picture of the royal couple before his daughter decides to play some music.
It's the actual school dance we see first, though: Mia and Jaime are slow dancing together,
and Mia starts touching Jaime's groin, getting stares from everyone around them and the attention
of a teacher, who kicks them out of the party. Meanwhile, Lola is trying to dance with Brent as
well while her father throws glitter at them. She explains to him that the song they're listening
to is the one she wants to be played during her wedding, which she'll have when she finally finds
her prince. Brent isn't her prince, however, so she asks her dad to dance with her instead. Lola
tells Eric he is her prince, always has been, and there will be nobody good enough to ever replace
him. She closes her eyes and leans in for a kiss - Eric hesitates at first, but as he gives up and
leans in to kiss Lola, they're cut off by Brent making noise - he's noticed his razor blade on the
chair and he's sat on it on purpose to hide it. We cut to Holly again then, who is talking to
Mr Valentine - the cop promises he's sent out an investigation team and will contact her if he has
any news. Holly returns to Brent's room and, after failing to contact her mother on the phone because
of the late hours, she cries her heart off. At Lola's, we see Eric chopping the head off the
roadkill they picked up later and passing the body to his daughter before grabbing a bucket of water.
Under Brent's watching eyes and while he tries once again to cut the rope with his blade,
they go into the living room and move the carpet to reveal a secret door on the floor.
Screeching from various creatures can be heard when they open it to feed them with
the animal and throw the water at them. A little image parallelism occurs then:
Eric leaves the house to grab his tools at the same time a professor leaves the school
to find Jaime and Mia making love inside the car. After the couple is kicked out by their teacher,
we go back to Eric, who hands his electric drill to Lola so she can drill a hole on Brent's head.
After doing so twice, they start pouring hot water into it, revealing the procedure behind what
happened to Bright Eyes: lobotomization. Luckily Brent manages to finish cutting the rope tying
his hand before they're done, and he pushes them away from him before grabbing the falling drill to
cut the rope on his ankles, then proceeds to use to knife he takes off his feet to use it on Eric
repeatedly. Furious, Carla jumps on him, but he manages to shake her off before going after Eric.
He pushes him inside the pit and watches how the creatures -who turn out to be the previous
lobotomized victims- feed on him. As Brent stares at the horrifying scene in front of
him with disgust, Lola approaches him from behind and pushes him into the pit as well. Getting even
angrier when she realizes she can't save her dad, she starts throwing things into the pit before
closing it. Some of those things turn out to be the flashlight and the hammer, which Brent uses
to defend himself from the other victims, leaving him as the only living being left in there.
Back in town, Jaime takes an exhausted Mia back to her house,
trying not to look suspicious or awkward in front of her father. Another parallelism occurs here:
as Lola checks on Bright Eyes, Mr Valentine goes inside the house to check on Mia,
who is crying in her bedroom, wondering why "he" isn't found. He goes back to his own bedroom then,
and he tells his wife Mia is fine while looking at a picture on his night table: it's Timmy
Valentine, the victim that escaped - his son and Mia's brother, the boy she's asking to be found.
Another revelation happens while Lola puts a pillow on Bright Eye's face to get rid of her:
the woman had been Lola's mother. Speaking of revelations, Holly has one while sleeping on
Brent's bed: he remembers him mentioning Lola's failed invitation to prom, so she decides to call
Mr Valentine and inform him of this. Mr Valentine quickly gets in his car and drives to Lola's
house, where he breaks in after seeing the blood on the floor through the window. He manages to
find the pit thanks to the noises Brent is making by throwing bones at the doors, but right after he
opens it, Lola appears behind him and pushes him in as he did with Brent. She walks back
when he tries to shoot her with the officer's gun then grabs the knife and Brent's necklace,
which she puts around her own neck. Before leaving the house, she tells Brent that she'll go after
Carla and Holly to hurt them like Brent hurt her and her dad. The doors of the pit are left open.
Morning comes. Brent is still in the pit, and after watching the piles of bones for a while,
he gets an idea. As this happens, Lola is walking along the road, barefoot, shoes and scrapbook one
hand, knife on the other. When she sees a car in the distance she quickly realizes that's Holly,
who never heard back from Mr Valentine. She throws the scrapbook at her car to make her
stop then jumps in to attack Holly. While the girls struggle in a fight,
Brent is creating a pile of bones and bones that help him climb out of the pit. He wastes no time
in escaping by using the police car Mr Valentine had arrived with, driving at an insane speed. In a
matter of seconds, he makes it to the spot on the road where Lola is chasing Holly - Brent quickly
recognizes his girlfriend and drives around her, hitting Lola instead. As soon as he stops the car,
Holly gets inside and cries when she realizes who is driving. They take a moment to reunite
and bask in each other's presence, but they're interrupted by the painful groans of Lola, who
is dragging herself on the road behind them, knife still in hand because she still wants her revenge.
Brent sees her and after sharing a look with Holly, he doesn't hesitate: he starts the car
to run over her. Lola watches her end come to her in slow motion. With the danger and horrors
finally over, Brent drives back to his home, where he and Holly reunite with Carla in a tight hug.