If you’re a certain kind of person, “Love Lies Bleeding” is a lot of fun. That might be a strange way to describe a seedy, neon-drenched crime thriller about steroid addiction, domestic abuse, and feeling like you’re the only adult awash in a sea of children, but what can I say? My audience loved it.

Directed and written by Rose Glass (who shares a co-writing credit with Weronika Tofilska), “Love Lies Bleeding” stars Kristen Stewart as Lou, a gym manager in a remote town somewhere in the American southwest. One day, she meets Jackie (Katy O’Brien), a volatile fitness fanatic who is hitchhiking her way to a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas. The pair soon fall in love, but Lou feels trapped in her hometown thanks to a desire to protect her sister Beth (Jena Malone) from an abusive husband (Dave Franco). There is also the matter of Lou’s dad, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), who runs a gun running operation and owns the local police. Lou would like nothing better than to live an uncomplicated life, but as she and Jackie fall harder for each other (and Jackie’s addiction to anabolic steroids makes her increasingly erratic), Lou finds herself inevitably pulled back into her father’s criminal orbit – particularly after Jackie commits an act of violence that threatens the life she and Lou have built.

  

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