Lack of good storyline.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

We horror fans get used to sitting through a lot of stinkers to find a few goodies every so often. I don't know why I hadn't heard of this one before. Maybe it's because I'm the only person in my group of friends who actually digs horror. The acting is good and the characters are as quirky and intense as they should be. There are some very cringey moments and inappropriate laughs. I quite enjoyed it.

So well acted, directed, and composed. This film has a campy feel and an experts touch. Haunts you emotionally, thrills you with sadistic gore and torture, and sticks with you when it's over. Sean Byrne was well prepared for this to be his first full length picture. Was very surprised I missed this one 8 years ago. Not going to give away a single scene here, just my opinion. This movie, in a nutshell, is about dealing with trauma and loss. There are scenes that take me back to campy teen flicks from my teens and of the past ten years, but the meat of the story is the kidnapping, torture, shocking and hard to watch material, and the insanely brilliant performance by Robin McLeavy. Definitely worth an hour and 24 minutes of your time when you want to get into a good horror movie.

Spoiler Alert: this film is b-o-r-i-n-g. In fact, I'm already considering knocking off one star from my 4-star rating, to reinforce my annoyance.Sean Byrne, the director and screenwriter, seems not to be aware of a cardinal rule for good horror movies: if you're intending to shock the audience, don't telegraph what's about to happen with with a neon sign, such as: If you're a high school kid at a dance with a hot drunken girl who huskily tells you, "F**k me", DO drive off the school grounds before getting naked and nasty in the back seat of your car. (A face at the car window! Horrors, is it the maniac? Or, is it the disapproving teacher at your car door, because... you know, you're still in the school parking lot, moron.) If you're the young hero in the clutches of bloodthirsty maniacs, and you've been let in on the secret of what happened to all those other nice-but-now-missing teens, and then see an abattoir full of what you imagine are unspeakable horrors, and then manage to free yourself your bonds—the second time, because you were too inept to escape the first time—and then manage to disable both your tormentors, DON'T lean over the edge, unbalanced, and stare into the pit of horrors, unaware of who we all know is creeping up behind you to do you know what.This movie makes you want to yell the equivalent of "For chrissake don't go in the dark basement, you twit!" a score of times before the film is even halfway over. At that point, I gave up, shrugged, and judged our young hero as a "Darwin Award front-runner".Maybe Mr. Byrne intended this to be a comic send-up of teen slasher movies; then again, perhaps Australian horror movie heroes haven't yet learned that when you've escaped from an insane killer you run like hell as far as you can, and you never count your nemesis down and out until you've put 15 bullets into his head, set fire to him, then blown up what's left with high explosives.

I really do hope someone had as much fun making this, as I did watching it. The loved ones puts it's own spin on the teen horror cliché that has been made over and over again in the last fifteen years. From the moment the film begins, it only tells what you need to know; instead of dwelling on the characters relationships that are really just factors in the movie's later overall presentation. It does come to a rough start, however. Nothing that will take more than ten minutes of screen-time, but some segments regarding prom are unnecessary to say at the least (the best friend). Once it takes off, The loved ones is a triumph for it's genre. A horror movie can only be as good, if it's still a good movie when you're not scared. In this particular instance I was not, but instead I was baffled at the horror I was presented. The loved ones treats it's lead, Brent, as the source of the story; you the viewer sees what Brent sees, and that's where the story comes into it's own. It's fun, self-aware, and in some of it's best minutes of screen time, it was realistic. I give it a 8.6, rounding to a 9.