With a title like Love Me, there’s not a hell lot to actually love. The script is half-baked, the dialogue stilted and the mystery is, well, unmysterious. For her part, Lindsey Shaw doesn’t do a bad job, so that’s at least one positive thing I took away from the film.
Love Me (2013)
REVIEW NAVIGATION
The Movie | Special Features | Video Quality | Audio Quality | Overall
Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller, Mystery
Anchor Bay | PG13 – 98 min. – $24.99 | January 15, 2013
MOVIE INFO:
Directed by: Rick Bota
Writer(s): Kat Candler (written by)
Cast: Lindsey Shaw, Jamie Johnston, Jean-Luc Bilodeau, Kaitlyn Wong, Mikaela Cochrane
DISC INFO:
Features: Featurettes
Number of Discs: 1
Audio: English (Dolby TrueHD 5.1)
Video: 1080p/Widescreen 1.78
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Disc Size: 21.9 GB
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Region(s): A
THE MOVIE – 2.0/5
** Note: This review does contain SPOILERS so please move on to the other sections if you don’t want to know plot and possible twist details. **
Love Me is the latest in the ‘tween thriller genre (i.e. rated PG-13) with a lazy, half-assed script and a twist ending one could see coming twenty miles away; in this case, really within the first few minutes. I wouldn’t mind that so much if I could even remotely care about the teen angst drama that fills the middle section. Seriously, those scenes seem to be taken from rejected CW scripts…
The movie takes place in some non-descript town in some non-descript state (the back cover says Ridgedale, but I don’t ever recall it being mentioned, in fact the police cars merely say “Police”) it opens on a prologue of cute girl Melissa Kennedy being stalked in muscle car by some unknown person. She’s obviously angry with whoever it is and tries to escape but this individual manages to catch up to her (on foot) where we cut to her blood-curdling screams. It’s a cheap cut that’s been done numerous times… 30 years ago.
After the lame intro, fast forward 3 months and we are introduced to our main character, Sylvia Shaw (LYNDSEY SHAW), getting ready for school and putting the finishing touches on her artistic hobby of making paper miniatures for an artistic project. At school she’s got a core group of friends: comic book artist Harry (JEAN-LUC BILODEAU), sassy girl Dalyn (KAITLYN WONG aka the Three-Breasted Girl in the Total Recall remake) and flaky chick Katie (MIKAELA COCHRANE) and her boyfriend, Brian.
While walking to their first class, Sylvia falls head over heels (literally) for newcomer, rich kid and bad boy Lucas Green (JAMIE JOHNSTON). Later, Lucas apologizes for accidentally tripping her by giving a mix CD with some personally favorite angst-y songs and she immediately is drawn towards him. However, her friends are not so keen on the guy from Harry who has had a crush on Sylvia for years and Dalyn who, as Sylvia later discovers, had once dated Lucas and went a bit “psycho” on him when they broke up. But as Sylvia gets closer to Lucas, she discovers he’s not so clean either after discovering he’s the prime suspect in Melissa’s disappearance as the pair had been dating at the time.
Ignoring her friends’ warnings, Sylvia gets closer to Lucas as their relationship, quickly, steps up to the next level. However, there are some troubling warning signs – aside from being the two lead detective’s primary suspect – for one he beat a punk kid to a pulp (there’s a background story concerning Sylvia and her old school). Sylvia breaks things with Lucas but soon he becomes obsessed calling multiple times and tracking her down at her theater job, jiggling a locked door handle without saying a word (why?).
The movie also delves a bit into the investigation part as the detectives (played by Michelle Haug and Peter Skagan) try to rattle Lucas but also track down other leads including Sylvia’s friends who both have some sort of connection with the missing/presumed deceased. So, is Lucas the one who harmed Melissa? Or is somebody else to blame? Personally, I couldn’t have cared less, though within the first 10-minutes I was 99% certain who it was.
That’s only one of the problems with Love Me. The mystery element isn’t that, well, mysterious, it kind of reminds me of some of those “Fear Street” tween novels by R.L. Stine, some aren’t bad but the “who-done-it” aspect were lacking, and it’s a similar situation in this movie as well. However, I could probably forgive if it were only that but simply put, the teen angst dramatic parts were boring as all hell and very hard to sit through, especially with silted dialogue. To me, the entire film felt like an extended episode of “Pretty Little Liars” (a show I highly recommend, by the way; which Lindsey Shaw guest-starred on) with weaker writing.
Love Me, to my surprise yet not, was directed by Rick Bota, a name you might not recognize but some of his work you have. Most of his career was spent as DP on numerous television series such as “Tales from the Crypt”, “Close to Home” and “Jericho” (and feature films The Babysitter and, ugh, Barb Wire). But his directing career, feature wise, was back-to-back-to-back Hellraiser movies (Hellseeker, Deader and Hellworld) all of which pretty much stunk.
In fairness, I can’t lay too much blame on Bota as the screenplay, by Kat Chandler, was half-assed in its presentation and utterly void of surprise, the kiss of death for any suspense-thriller. But an even bigger sin is that while the killer might’ve been predictable, everything else was downright boring and became a chore to sit through. One bit of praise though is Shaw does share some sort of charm as she’s not your typical female lead but has a mysterious aura which I’ve seen on “Pretty Little Liars” and The Howling Reborn. As for everyone else, they’re not bad but awfully forgettable.
As it stands, Love Me is nothing more than a made-for-TV flick that is destined to be shown on Lifetime one day. The acting isn’t terrible but the dialogue is at times atrocious and worst of all, this suspense/thriller had little of either and wasn’t even that mysterious. I can without a doubt suggest to skip this one altogether.
SPECIAL FEATURES – 1.25/5
Love Me: Behind the Scenes (7:14; HD) is nothing more than a thin look behind the camera at how the movie was made with cast/crew interviews explaining the plot and/or their characters.
Love Me: Stories from the Set (6:10; HD) – This is more BTS footage but contains some outtakes as well as thoughts from the cast and director about working with one another. It’s thin but kind of fun to watch.
Previews – 10 Years, The Howling Reborn, Hiding
VIDEO – 3.75/5
Love Me arrives on Blu-ray presented with a sleek and clean 1080p high-definition transfer. The film is presented with a 1.78 widescreen aspect ratio and looks like it was filmed digitally since it’s absolutely free of grain or noise. The detail levels though does look good and there isn’t any signs of artifacting or other flaws. That being said, presumably this had a minimal budget so it’s not something that exactly pops off the screen but it’s certainly acceptable.
AUDIO – 3.5/5
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track, like the video transfer, isn’t amazing and is more serviceable than anything else. The dialogue at times sounds muffled and flat whiles other elements such as any action, the music or score sounds a bit more dynamic making use of the surrounds. The LFE channel unfortunately is relegated to minimal use.
OVERALL – 2.0/5
Overall, with a title like Love Me, there’s not a hell lot to actually love. The script is half-baked, the dialogue stilted and the mystery is, well, unmysterious. For her part, Lindsey Shaw doesn’t do a bad job, so that’s at least one positive thing I took away from the film. The video/audio transfers aren’t anything incredible but acceptable nonetheless and the features are limited.
The Movieman
Published: 01/14/2013