YMMV / Love Lies Bleeding

• Awesome Moments: Jackie growing to giant size and pinning down Lou Sr. while Lou sticks a gun in his mouth. They decide not to kill him and just let him get arrested.
• Catharsis Factor: Jackie fatally beating the fuck out of JJ is horrific and sets in motion a lot of tragedy, but also very, VERY well-deserved and, to many viewers, the best outcome for the situation.
• Complete Monster: Lou Langston Sr. puts up an act as a kindly family man, but is in truth a ruthless mobster who will discard anything he supposedly loves for his own selfish gain. Running illegal guns to and from Mexico, Lou Sr. has long murdered anyone who stood in his way, dumping their bodies in a canyon that is littered with the remains of his victims. When his daughter Lou and her lover Jackie begin meddling in his affairs, Lou Sr. manipulates a drugged-out Jackie into killing a witness before trying to murder her. Despite his seeming care for his family, Lou Sr. allows his other daughter Beth to stay trapped in a horribly abusive relationship because it's profitable; is heavily indicated to have murdered his wife when she was going to turn witness for law enforcement; and not only forced Lou to commit murder in his name, but tries to torture and kill her as well when Lou Sr. decides she is too stricken by conscience.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Drive-Away Dolls and Bottoms, two other films with criminal lesbian leads.
• Funny Moments: At the end of the movie, it's revealed that Daisy is still barely alive in the back of Lou's truck. Lou casually chokes her to death and disposes of the body as a Funny Background Event while Jackie sleeps and the credits roll.
• Genius Bonus: Lou states that she gets her steroids cheap because her dealer "buys them in bulk from Germany or Romania." Eastern Bloc countries, but especially East Germany were notorious for their extensive usage of PED in international sporting events, which led to spectacular results, but also long-lasting health problems for athletes who were forced into the abuse. Since it's confirmed the film takes place during the fall of the Berlin Wall, it makes sense why it would be so cheap to acquire large quantities of steroids from there.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Jackie and Lou making plans to go to Vegas for the competition and then just keep driving west.
  • Even after Beth attacks Lou due to Jackie killing JJ, Lou's last words to her are an angry "Love you!"
  • Jackie and Lou running off together at the end of the movie in giant form.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The gruesome sight of JJ’s corpse with his jaw being horribly mangled after Jackie beat him to death.
  • Jackie's hallucination of vomiting up a fully-grown Lou while onstage at Vegas.
• Spiritual Successor: The film is an atmospheric slow-burn neo-noir romantic crime drama, set in a liminal concrete suburbia filled with bird's eye shots of driving, a mix of obscure 80s songs and an minimal synth score, with periodic spurts of brief, brutal violence. It goes without saying the movie bears more than few similarities to Drive, albeit with vastly different main characters.
  • The film has also drawn comparisons to Bound for being a neo-noir focusing on a queer relationship with a butch lesbian lead.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Lou and Jackie fighting after Lou finds out Jackie had sex with JJ for a job.
  • Jackie headbutting Lou in a moment of roid-rage and leaving for Las Vegas on her own.
  • After killing Daisy to protect Lou, Jackie calls her family and tearfully tells her sister to never fall in love because it hurts so much. Then her mother picks up the phone, calls her a monster, and tells her to stay away from the family.
  • Beth raging and attacking Lou after finding out Jackie killed JJ.

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