A fast be aware: “physique horror” would not essentially must contain worry or revulsion. The time period features a common fascination or obsession with the physique and its capabilities, the “horror” denoting elements that well mannered society would in any other case stray away from. As such, “Love Lies Bleeding” makes its intentions clear proper from the beginning, because it introduces Lou (Kristen Stewart) cleansing the filthy excrement-filled bathrooms on the gymnasium she operates with a matter-of-fact frankness. It is 1989, and the denizens of Lou’s podunk Texas city all reside their lives with what looks like a everlasting sheen of sweat layered over their pores and skin. Lou’s sister, Beth (Jena Malone) is clearly being abused by her loser husband JJ (Dave Franco), and her father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), is the general public proprietor of the gymnasium and gun membership and personal proprietor of a gun-running crime cabal. Half of the city’s inhabitants sport mullets (together with Lou), and nearly each member of the gymnasium she works at is a misogynistic gun-toting dudebro, an enormous bummer for an out-and-proud lesbian like Lou.
That every one modifications the day that Jackie (Katy O’Brian) hitches into city. If Lou and the townies are emblematic of the stagnation of America as they parasitically feed off of one another whereas spouting hole epithets of greatness, Jackie is a shining, completely coiffed, stunningly muscle-bound anthropomorphic American Dream. A runaway from her religiously strict small city, Jackie is adept at chasing her personal dream by any means needed, at first sleeping with JJ to get a job at Lou Sr.’s gun vary, then chatting up Lou herself as the 2 fall in love at first sight. Jackie must get to Las Vegas to compete in a bodybuilding match as step one in all her path to changing into a coach in California, and shortly sufficient, Lou turns into a part of her imaginative and prescient board, the 2 genuinely falling in love with each other.
The inevitable problems come up: Lou will get Jackie hooked on unlawful steroid photographs, injections that appear to be having a really Unbelievable Hulk-like impact on Jackie’s physique in addition to her thoughts. Lou’s additionally terrified to aim to get out from underneath the thumb of her oppressive and violent father, and may’t abide leaving Beth behind with the abusive JJ. After a second of violence, Lou and Jackie turn into criminals and hatch a plan to get out of city. For sure, issues solely get messier (actually and figuratively) from there.