Sundance 2024: Love Lies Bleeding will shock you, change you, & make you cheer

Rose Glass’ intense, sexy, and wildly weird thriller Love Lies Bleeding received rapturous applause and a standing ovation at its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this past weekend.

Starring a terrific Kristen Stewart, a terrifying Ed Harris, and a brilliant breakout performance from Katy O’Brian, Love Lies Bleeding is a movie that will stick with you forever.

The movie stars Stewart as a gritty dyke working at a gym in a rundown town where her father is a local crime lord. When a new bodybuilder, played by O’Brian, walks into the gym and into her life, Stewart is forced to get involved with the father and life she has tried so hard to distance herself from.

The film takes several twists and turns and never shies away from its more disturbing aspects, instead shoving them in viewers’ faces, making sure that we’ll never forget what we saw. As it goes on, the film gets more extreme and weird, leading to one of the best and most shocking climaxes I’ve seen in a while.

These queer women aren’t nice, they aren’t clean, they aren’t good people, and I love that. Love Lies Bleeding proudly says “Gay Wrongs” with its whole, beefy chest.

Glass, O’Brian, and the disturbingly menacing Harris deserve all the awards in the world for this film, and Glass should become a filmmaker that everyone is familiar with after this.

O’Brian is stunning as a female bodybuilder with a dark past and violent temper that is only compounded by the steroids she takes. As she falls in love with Stewart and becomes entangled in her complicated and violent family life, her present becomes even darker than her past.

She already had become popular among queer women with her role as a former Imperial officer in the Disney+ show Andor, but after this film, she’s sure to become an icon in the community on the level of Stewart herself. She’s a true breakout star.

As a lesbian, Love Lies Bleeding is my new favorite movie about queer women, and one of my favorite movies I’ve ever seen.