Since Wes Craven's SCREAM reignited interest in horror in 1996 and proved that it was once again viable box office, so has there been resurgence in the teenage sex and death flick.  Unlike the gawky and under-confident teenagers of a quarter century ago who had to borrow their parents' oversized cars to get some action, today's teens are muscular and sexy model types who seem to have stepped off of the pages of GQ and Playboy magazines.  Most of them appear to have money and their own set of wheels.  In ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE, a feature which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2006 but was filmed a year earlier, director Jonathan Levine manages to take a very overdone and tired horror subgenre and make it real and interesting. 

WARNING: Spoilers Ahead

The film's title says it all: all the boys do love Mandy Lane, The Perfect Girl in High School, played adeptly by Amber Heard of THE STEPFATHER remake, and they make no attempt to hide their feelings.  The obnoxious jock Dylan (Adam Powell) and his posse of over-stimulated testosterone and estrogen friends, all expertly portrayed by Whitney Able (Chloe), Luke Grimes (Jake), Melissa Price (Marlin), Edwin Hodge (Bird), and Aaron Himelstein (Red), invite Mandy Lane to a party at his house. 

Mandy agrees, and elects to bring her awkward friend Emmet (Michael Welch) along, much to Dylan's chagrin.  Once there, Dylan puts the moves on Mandy who brushes off his advances.  This disgusts Emmet who, although he and Mandy appear to be platonic, very obviously wants her, too, and tricks Dylan into a maneuver designed to impress Mandy but that effectively takes Dylan out of the game completely.   Nine months after Dylan's untimely demise, Red rounds up Chloe, Jake, Marlin, and Bird for a weekend at his father's mansion in Bastrop, TX, the same town where Tobe Hooper introduced us to Leatherface in 1974. 

A caretaker in the form of a much older Garth (Anson Mount) who lives in a shed in the back is there to oversee the teens and protect them, complete with a firearm at his side.  Mandy, whose parents died when she was young and is now being raised by her aunt, is invited and decides to go along.  Once there, the guys all descend upon the fetching blonde, making no bones about how much they want to jump hers.  Jake is especially aggressive and looks a bit like Robert Pattinson from TWILIGHT.  Mandy is made the most uncomfortable by him, which makes one ponder why she would agree to spend the weekend with a group of people who all want the one thing from her that she is not willing to surrender.  That question is answered near the end in an interesting twist. 

Things begin to go wrong rather quickly and it does not take the high schoolers long to learn that there is a murderer in their midst.  You can see the killer's identity coming from a mile away and yet despite that, the film remains interesting enough for the audience to want to see it through to the end.  Director Levine handles the film with a restrained hand, which is refreshing when most films like this tend to hit the audience over the head with quick cuts, loud music and sound effects in a desperate effort to be suspenseful.  The middle of the film drags a bit but not by too much, and perhaps MANDY LANE would benefit by some tighter editing. 

The females in the film are snotty and bitchy but not in an overly hateful fashion.  Unlike the shallow vamps in the BLACK CHRISTMAS remake in 2006, Chloe and Marlin, just like the guys who are all pining after Mandy, are all real people.  Credit must go to the performers in this film.  They all talk and sound like real teenagers who are looking to find their place in the world, and are concerned with how others perceive them and are the types to surrender to peer pressure. 

The film was picked up for distribution by the Weinstein Company.  The current version possess a hard "R" rating, though it would not surprise me to see a tamer "PG-13" cut get released as the film is about high school students.  Now that Heard is gaining notoriety the film should easily see the light of day as a theatrical release, or at the very least a DVD/Blu-ray incarnation. 

The film won't break any new ground, but the twist is nice and it's a fun movie to watch with a rowdy theater crowd.