In Sean Byrne’s 2009grisly prom massacre The Loved Ones, we’re introduced to the affable, shy, and rather sweet Lola Stone (Robin McLeavy). She approaches a cute young stoner guy with a greasy mop of hair called Brent (Xavier Mitchell), wondering if he’d be interested in taking her to prom. In his defense, Brent handles the situation with Lola delicately and declines her offer with tact and sensitivity. In the next scene Brent is having sex with his girlfriend Holly, both oblivious to Lola standing a few feet away, watching everything. Instead of giving into despair, Lola orchestrates an abduction and a prom night of her own and she’ll be the one crowned Queen of The Dance.
We know from the outset that Lola is an outsider. The simple fact that Brent and Holly are amused by the prospect of Lola asking him to the dance tells us way more about the kind of people they are and virtually nothing about Lola. It suggests the young couple consider her an oddball, weirdo, or misfit and somehow ‘less-than’ the people they are. A lack of empathetic thinking is common amongst teenagers (and adults) and playing a ‘sex game,’ only offering favors if Brent relents and gives up Lola’s name is extraordinarily mean-spirited and something you know they’ll laugh about with their friends later.
The film opens with Brent and his father cruising along a rural road. Brent is arguing with dad about driving such a shitty car and berating him for smoking. He briefly takes his eyes off the road and a young boy, horribly mutilated, is standing in the middle of the street. Brent crashes the car, killing his father. A few months later and Brett is a loner, a stoner who self-harms and listens to death metal in his bedroom. His mother is whittled down to skin and bone from grief and alcoholism and Brent is still blaming himself for the crash. Things couldn’t possibly get any worse...
Brent wakes up at the family dinner table. There are streamers, a glitter ball, power ballads on the radio, and chicken wings. Everyone is dressed to the best. Lola, Pop, and a lobotomized woman called Bright Eyes are all gathered around, waiting for Brent to wake. It is a near-perfect celebration – only Brent is tied to a chair and Lola is filling a syringe with chemicals they inject into his neck. We learn Lola’s driving emotion is love and this is her unique way of making sure he measures up. In adjacent storylines, Brent’s obnoxious friend Dan (Fred Whitlock) attends the real prom with goth Mia (Jessica McNamee), a distressed young woman with a missing brother. Holly (Jessica Thaine) and Brent’s mother figure out something is off when the dying dog finds its way home.
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Sean Byrne has cited Annie Wilkes from Misery and Carrie White from Carrie as two famous characters who have been integrated into Lola’s DNA. What makes Lola only marginally less abhorrent than other serial killers/movie psychotics is that there is an element of extreme loneliness involved in every pursuit. Lots of horror movie villains have troubled backgrounds, which doesn't justify their actions. To be a sympathetic villain, you really have to understand where they are coming from, and we all know what motivates Lola, even if we could never condone her actions -- love and connection are what fuel the sadism.
Sympathy doesn't necessarily have to be binary, black and white. So on a sliding scale, you can feel sorry for Lola and still hate the appalling things she is capable of. You do understand why she is carrying out these nightmarish things, at least from an emotional point of view, and we can all relate to that. Okay, so maybe not lobotomizing potential love interests for the simple reason they refused an invitation to the dance. In one scene we see that Lola has been a participant in this depravity since her formative years. She has a scrapbook detailing their family history of abduction and torture and in one photo she is no more than 7 years old and standing beside a mutilated boy. At some point, the horror became normal for the girl, and she was indoctrinated into a cult of her father’s cruelty. Just another way of thinking. In another scene, her father gifts her a prom dress, and she insists he stay and watch her try it on. Even as she begins to take her clothes off, we understand this relationship has an incestuous element. Lola’s mother, Bright Eyes (a depraved reference to Watership Down) undergoing a lobotomy indicates she may have objected at some point and paid a heavy price.
‘The initial idea for Princess came from my niece, who was 5 when I started writing. Like most little girls her favorite color was pink, and she was into fairy wings and magic wands, etc. I thought it would be interesting to take that belief in Disney-style fantasy and transplant it in the mind of a socially invisible teenager who’s had an insanely messed up socialization,’ Director Sean Byrne told Greg King. ‘Placing innocence and madness side by side was the idea. I imagined Lola to be as vulnerable as Carrie, as sadistic as Annie Wilkes from Misery, and as spoiled as Veruca Salt from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.’
Pop and Lola have been planning and plotting their crimes for decades. Exacting complex, brutal and amazing revenge on any boy who dares to make Lola feel rejected. It isn’t until the cellar reveal that we witness Lola’s own brand of mercy – she’s been keeping the boys as feral pets in a cellar beneath her kitchen. This clearly demonstrates she doesn’t fully comprehend the seriousness of her actions, and it is the father who is the brains behind this operation. Who would suspect a frail old man and his shy teenage daughter of abducting strong young men and keeping them as pets?
Lola took a big risk keeping those boys alive. They could escape, they could escape and kill her. But she took the risk anyway. Maybe she wanted to keep them alive, maybe she didn’t want them to leave, or maybe she wanted them to live.
