"Lovers Lane" focuses on a group of high school students who, on Valentine's Day weekend, find themselves preyed upon by a hook-handed killer who has escaped from a psychiatric hospital, where he was incarcerated for committing murders at a remote lovers' lane years prior.
This low-budget effort was independently produced and filmed in Seattle, and is probably best known for being the film debut of then-unknown local actress Anna Faris, who gained widespread fame for her lead role in the "Scary Movie" parody films shortly after. Something of a relic of the video store era, "Lovers Lane" is actually a fairly competently-made film that rises head and shoulders above its direct-to-video peers of the time (take, for instance, the abysmal albeit unforgettable "Bloody Murder", which was released the same year).
Despite the fact that it heavily pulls ideas from the big-budget studio slashers it was competing with (such as "Urban Legend" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer", among others), what makes "Lovers Lane" stand out is that it boasts a visual and narrative style that is much more reminiscent of early '80s slasher films. Rather than totally retreading the groundwork of its peers, the film instead takes the approach of '80s efforts like "The Initiation", "Death Screams", and "My Bloody Valentine".
A small-town charm permeates the first half of the film, with homegrown locations such as retro diners, gas stations, and bowling alleys (the filmmakers clearly seem to have had an affinity for 1950s Americana), while the second half is set at night and takes place in a pitch-black forest and a ramshackle farmhouse, where the teenage bloodletting and slasher shenanigans kick into high gear. The film is slickly shot and while it doesn't exactly offer anything fresh, the hodgepodge of elements here make it very watchable. The cast is capable given the material they have to handle, and Faris's offbeat screen presence that helped make her a famous comic actress shows strongly here, even when she was at her most inexperienced.
The film winds down with a twist ending that is also very much rooted in the '80s slasher tradition, which, while perhaps not totally satisfying, is in sync with the tone the film has laid out from the beginning. All in all, "Lovers Lane" is a unique curio in the sense that, despite being birthed amidst the slicker trends of late '90s slashers, feels much more like a rough-hewn splatter flick from the '80s. It surely is not original, but it is a noble ode to the earlier independent films that shaped the genre. Bonus points for the pointless (albeit well-filmed) recurring shots of bowling pins clattering across the lanes. How's that for a double entendre? 7/10.
This low-budget effort was independently produced and filmed in Seattle, and is probably best known for being the film debut of then-unknown local actress Anna Faris, who gained widespread fame for her lead role in the "Scary Movie" parody films shortly after. Something of a relic of the video store era, "Lovers Lane" is actually a fairly competently-made film that rises head and shoulders above its direct-to-video peers of the time (take, for instance, the abysmal albeit unforgettable "Bloody Murder", which was released the same year).
Despite the fact that it heavily pulls ideas from the big-budget studio slashers it was competing with (such as "Urban Legend" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer", among others), what makes "Lovers Lane" stand out is that it boasts a visual and narrative style that is much more reminiscent of early '80s slasher films. Rather than totally retreading the groundwork of its peers, the film instead takes the approach of '80s efforts like "The Initiation", "Death Screams", and "My Bloody Valentine".
A small-town charm permeates the first half of the film, with homegrown locations such as retro diners, gas stations, and bowling alleys (the filmmakers clearly seem to have had an affinity for 1950s Americana), while the second half is set at night and takes place in a pitch-black forest and a ramshackle farmhouse, where the teenage bloodletting and slasher shenanigans kick into high gear. The film is slickly shot and while it doesn't exactly offer anything fresh, the hodgepodge of elements here make it very watchable. The cast is capable given the material they have to handle, and Faris's offbeat screen presence that helped make her a famous comic actress shows strongly here, even when she was at her most inexperienced.
The film winds down with a twist ending that is also very much rooted in the '80s slasher tradition, which, while perhaps not totally satisfying, is in sync with the tone the film has laid out from the beginning. All in all, "Lovers Lane" is a unique curio in the sense that, despite being birthed amidst the slicker trends of late '90s slashers, feels much more like a rough-hewn splatter flick from the '80s. It surely is not original, but it is a noble ode to the earlier independent films that shaped the genre. Bonus points for the pointless (albeit well-filmed) recurring shots of bowling pins clattering across the lanes. How's that for a double entendre? 7/10.