Kristen Stewart is brutal and brilliant in the bloody lesbian thriller Love Lies Bleeding

Rose Glass launched her career with the brutal British horror Saint Maud, but for her follow-up, she weaves a distinctly American tale of violence and obsession. Love Lies Bleeding — which premiered to a whooping late-night crowd at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival — is part grungy noir, part twisted romance, chronicling the star-crossed love affair between gym manager Lou (a phenomenal Kristen Stewart) and aspiring bodybuilder Jackie (The Mandalorian actress Katy O’Brian).

Glass introduces Stewart’s solitary Lou with her hand literally shoved in a clogged toilet bowl, a not-so-glamorous intro to a not-so-glamorous existence. With her messy shag haircut and her stained tank tops, she’s not so much drifting through life as stuck, even as she’s surrounded by motivational gym posters screaming, “CHASE YOUR DREAMS” or “WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE TOUGH GET GOING.” She holds no love for her drab New Mexico hometown, and she only sticks around out of loyalty to her sister Beth (Jena Malone), who’s married to an abusive creep named JJ (a delightfully sleazy Dave Franco, sporting the world’s stringiest mullet). She’s also distanced herself from her father Lou Sr. (played by a menacing Ed Harris in an Argus Filch wig), who owns the local gun range and may or may not have ties to shady underworld dealings.

So when newcomer Jackie cruises into town, heading west on her way to a Las Vegas bodybuilding competition, it’s like a bolt of lightning strikes Lou’s gym. Lou spends much of the film trying to quit smoking, but around Jackie, she has no self-control, and together, the two fall fast and hard. For the first time in maybe forever, Lou has found a splash of color in her dusty, desaturated life, and Jackie has finally found someone who encourages her to chase her muscle-building dreams. But their brief bliss is interrupted when they find themselves sucked into Lou Sr.’s criminal empire, kickstarting a bloody odyssey of sex, blackmail, and murder.

Love Lies Bleeding is set in the 1980s, and Glass embraces all of the decade’s excess and neon-drenched hedonism. The muscles are big, the hair is bigger, and the story zigs and zags with thrilling abandon, especially when the bodies start to pile up. Lou and Jackie’s New Mexico existence may be dingy and cruel, but Glass sprinkles surrealist touches throughout, giving the entire film a fantastical, almost fairytale-like quality. Every shot of the night sky blazes with stars, making even the most mundane locations — like the gym parking lot where Lou and Jackie first share a cigarette — feel magical. Glass also embraces the inherent body horror of Jackie’s quest to bulk up, and as Jackie trains for the competition and injects more and more steroids, her skin stretches and veins bulge in extreme close-up. At certain points, you can literally hear O’Brian’s muscles popping and swelling, like she’s transforming into a non-green Hulk.

All the gore, excess, and gnarly twists threaten to send Love Lies Bleeding careening off the rails — and that’s before the movie veers into full sci-fi/fantasy territory in its blood-splattered final act. (After all, this is a movie where Harris literally bites into a still-wriggling stag beetle.) But it’s Stewart and O’Brian who bring the film back to reality, anchoring Lou and Jackie’s love story with the giddy obsession of two people who feel they’ve finally found their soulmate. Stewart is the film’s beating heart, and the actress masterfully sheds Lou’s cool façade as she and Jackie sink deeper into trouble. But O’Brian is also excellent as Jackie, who pursues her goals with a single-minded, starry-eyed fury (whether that’s a body-building title or Lou’s heart). It’s a brutal, bloody, and discombobulating ride, but boy, is it a blast. B+

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