Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

Love Lies Bleeding wears its influences like gym chalk: James M. Cain, David Lynch and the Coen brothers are smudged all over it. Rose Glass parks her crime thriller in rural New Mexico in 1989. Kristen Stewart’s Lou runs the gym. Katy O’Brian’s Jackie is a bodybuilder passing through on her way to a competition in Vegas. Lou’s father, played by Ed Harris, is crooked enough that federal agents come asking about him. From there the plot gets more tangled with every act, until the knots have knots. O’Brian is the real discovery, and Stewart is right there with her. The style is loud, grimy and heightened, and the final stretch goes somewhere so strange you’ll either cheer or blink. It holds a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. A 7.0 because it feels like nobody else’s movie, even while borrowing from everybody’s. $827.16 says the next time you check in at the gym, you wonder what the manager’s dad does for a living.

What works: Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart are terrific, and Rose Glass gives a familiar crime story a grimy, heightened style that makes it feel new.

What doesn’t: The plot gets more convoluted with every act, and its debts to older crime movies are obvious enough that it sometimes feels like a mixtape.

Who it’s for: Grown-up fans of pulpy crime thrillers who like their noir strange and don’t mind a last act that leaves reality behind.