A Love Story Built on Sweat, Violence, and Obsession
Love Lies Bleeding doesn’t hold your hand—it grabs you by the throat.
Directed by Rose Glass (Saint Maud), this gritty neo-noir blends crime, romance, body horror, and queer desire into one explosive cocktail. Set in the scorched wastelands of 1980s New Mexico, the film follows Lou (Kristen Stewart), a reclusive gym manager, who falls for Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a determined bodybuilder chasing a dream of glory.
But as their romance intensifies, so does the danger—especially when Jackie’s ambition pulls them both into a violent, spiraling web of drugs, murder, and broken bodies.
This isn’t just a queer romance. It’s a love story with teeth.
Kristen Stewart Like You’ve Never Seen Her
Lou is a woman defined by restraint—until she isn’t.
Kristen Stewart plays her with quiet fury, subtle grief, and a bottled-up rage that eventually erupts. As Lou’s walls crumble under the heat of Jackie’s presence, her past resurfaces in blood-soaked waves.
There’s no ironic detachment here. Stewart is raw, intimate, and stripped of her usual mystique. It’s easily one of her boldest performances—showing the fragility and fury that coexist inside a damaged soul.
Katy O’Brian Is a Revelation
Best known for her roles in The Mandalorian and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Katy O’Brian transforms—literally and figuratively—in this film. As Jackie, she’s magnetic: physically imposing but emotionally vulnerable.
Her bodybuilding scenes aren’t aesthetic—they’re loaded with meaning. Every vein-popping curl and protein shake is a symbol of control, transformation, and hunger—for power, for respect, for freedom.
She’s not just trying to change her body. She’s trying to escape who she used to be.
A Queer Relationship That Isn’t Sanitized
Too often, queer relationships in film are tamed, softened, or moralized. Not here.
Lou and Jackie’s connection is messy, sexual, toxic, and passionate. Their love is both empowering and dangerous. It lifts them up and nearly destroys them. And it’s never treated as a political statement—it’s simply human.
Their chemistry crackles from the moment they meet. But it’s what that connection costs them that gives the film its emotional weight.
Violence as Love Language
From bar brawls to gunfire to steroid-laced body horror, Love Lies Bleeding never shies away from the physical. But the violence isn’t gratuitous—it’s cathartic, symbolic, and sometimes… erotic.
Jackie’s body becomes both her weapon and her weakness. Lou’s buried trauma erupts in shocking ways. And by the final act, the film transforms into something nightmarish, surreal, and unforgettable.
Think Thelma & Louise meets Requiem for a Dream with a splash of Cronenberg.
A24’s Most Visceral Release of the Year?
With its pulsing synth soundtrack, harsh neon lighting, and grainy textures, Love Lies Bleeding oozes style. But it’s not surface-level aestheticism—it uses its visuals to reflect internal states: obsession, desire, grief, and rage.
Rose Glass proves again that she’s a director unafraid of discomfort, intimacy, or extremes. This is her vision, uncompromised.
Final Thoughts
Love Lies Bleeding is about love—but not the kind you put in Hallmark cards. It’s about the kind of love that scars, breaks, and consumes. The kind that makes you do terrible things and believe they’re justified.
It’s unflinching, unapologetically queer, and disturbingly honest.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
A wild, bloody, and hypnotic crime romance that refuses to play nice—and dares you to look away.