There’s not a single thing about the premise for Saint Maud director Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding that does not sound awesome: It stars Kristen Stewart as the manager of a gym who falls in love with an aspiring bodybuilder named Jackie (Katy O’Brian) who gets involved with a bad crowd—specifically the criminal father of Stewart’s character, played by a longhaired Ed Harris (Ed Longharris). Together, they embark on some kind of quest for vengeance while dodging bad guys and law enforcement guys.
This first trailer for Love Lies Bleeding jacks everything up (that’s a bodybuilding joke), looking darker, sweeter, more violent, and also maybe wackier than that premise implied. Katy O’Brian does a lot of muscly posing, Dave Franco pops up as a dirtbag working at a gun range, Kristen Stewart blind-fires her gun from behind cover like she’s in a Gears Of War, Kristen Stewart stares longingly at all the muscly posing, Ed Harris whips his long hair around, and Stewart and O’Brian go on a violent vengeful rampage for love… but then the body of the person they killed and wrapped in a rug starts moving! You’ve gotta see what that’s about.
Love Lies Bleeding will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival early next year before opening in regular non-festival theaters in the spring. In addition to Stewart, O’Brian, Franco, and Harris, it also features Jena Malone and Anna Baryshnikov. Also, while we’re generally optimistic on all of this, what’s the read on “revenge gets ripped” as a tagline? Feels a bit silly, but we could be convinced otherwise. And yeah, we did say “buff vengeance” in the headline, but we’re not the ones who made this movie and chose that tagline. Our standards are different.