Warning: Full spoilers follow for Love Lies Bleeding. If you're wondering if there's a post-credits scene, the answer is no - but do stick around when the credits start to roll.
While the sands of Arrakis are still swirling around the cinemas, this week sees the wide release of a potentially game-changing adventure through the wilds of the 1980s Southwest: Love Lies Bleeding.
Saint Maud director Rose Glass' stunning, strange, and deeply violent romp begins when an aspiring bodybuilder named Jack (The Mandalorian's Katy O'Brian) rolls through a small town and collides with local gym worker Lou (Kristen Stewart). The pair's burgeoning romance sets them on a brutal path, pitting the pair against local criminals, Lou's family, and the FBI. Though it might sound like your average crime flick, the horrifying romance of Love Lies Bleeding (review) makes it quite unlike most of the movies that hit the multiplex. So if you're here to work out what the heck happened as the film came to a close, we've got you covered.
Love Lies Bleeding Ending Explained
After the absolutely bonkers ride that is Love Lies Bleeding, the film ends with two shocking sequences that'll have audiences talking for years to come about what it all means. The third act of the film centers on Lou trying to save her new girlfriend Jack from her father (also named Lou), played by a menacing Ed Harris. His plan is to pin the many murders that have taken place throughout the film on Jack. But Stewart’s Lou has other plans, so she decides to free Jack from her father's palatial estate and set him up, leading the feds to Harris’ Lou and his violent gun-running criminal empire.
But he catches the girls on the way out. As Jack hears Lou's screams, the transformation that's been hinted at throughout the movie comes to fruition, her muscles exploding and expanding, a hulk-like power coursing through her veins. But where some films may have left it there, Love Lies Bleeding pushes this moment over the edge, with Jack growing to immense size — Attack of the 50 Foot Woman style — and towering over Lou Sr.'s home, easily pinning him down between her massive hands! While the moment seems like it's really happening, and that some kind of strange mutation has taken place thanks to the testosterone she's been taking, the movie then shows a giant Jack and Lou running through the skies, implying this is more of a projection or fantasy than a reality.
In case you were worried that the film ended on that vaguely happy note, don't fear, as Love Lies Bleeding closes in a fittingly bleak manner, as if to remind us these are extremely f*cked up people. As Jack sleeps off her testosterone-fueled fight — and possible gigantism — Lou realizes that Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), the woman she thought was dead in her pickup truck, is actually still alive. Though that might seem like a positive, she was shot in the head by Jack earlier in the film, so Lou has to strangle her to allow the pair to truly drive off into the sunset... who said love was dead? That also gives us a great extended gag scene as the credits roll, where Lou attempts to comedically drag Daisy's body into the desert as Jack sleeps soundly in the car.
What Does It All Mean?
Trying to decipher a movie like Love Lies Bleeding always runs the risk of ruining the art-house "go with the vibes" feeling that its studio A24 so regularly traffics in. But Glass has spoken to Indiewire about her feelings on the role of violence and sex in cinema. “Just speaking for myself, anyone who tries to kid themselves that sex and violence aren’t some of the cinema’s most important cornerstones is wrong," she shared.
On the surface, Love Lies Bleeding traffics in both of those, but it also acts as a story about women who had been othered and ignored finding each other and throwing themselves into a violent, transgressive escape from their lives. While the ending pushes the movie into more fantastical territory, the film refuses to answer whether or not what we saw was real, so it's up to the audience to decide whether it was fantasy/imagined or some kind of body horror magic that had been hinted at throughout the entire runtime. As for the moral ambiguity of Jack and Lou, and Lou's final brutal act, the film allows them to have the kind of violent, reckless, and often disgusting arc that women are often denied. Here Jack and Lou are undoubtedly criminal and ruthless, and yet we root for them anyway. That's thanks to Glass' storytelling and the incredible central performances by Stewart and O'Brian.
Movies to Watch After Love Lies Bleeding
In an interview at Roger Ebert, Glass spoke about her love of John Waters’ films and how his radical attitude of approaching criminality as something beautiful was a huge inspiration. The one that she names specifically is Female Trouble, in which Dawn Davenport — played by the legendary Divine — throws herself into a life of violent crime to escape the doldrums of day-to-day existence. It's a classic example of Waters' outrageous and fantastic filmmaking, and his fingerprints can definitely be felt on Love Lies Bleeding.
If you're left wanting more violent road trip movies that speak to the exploration of the outsider, then Terrence Malick's legendary Badlands is a great place to start. You can also try Oliver Stone's bleak and violent celebrity crime satire Natural Born Killers, which put a decidedly '90s spin on hyper-violence. There's also more than a dash of David Cronenberg-style body horror in Love Lies Bleeding, while Crash's exploration of sexuality, violence, disability, and body modification feels especially relevant. When it comes to rampaging revenge flicks starring powerful women, Coffy from Jack Hill immediately comes to mind as the perfect follow-up feature, and if Love Lies Bleeding has got you lusting for some more Americana-steeped women in trouble, then Ridley Scott's Thelma and Louise is of course a must-watch. As for romantic and violent adventures across the heartland, you have to look towards Tony Scott's Quentin Tarantino-scripted True Romance.
Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.
