Love Lies Bleeding (2024) review

Hitchhiking bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O'Brian), an orphan originally from Oklahoma, finds herself in New Mexico where she has sex with married J.J. (Dave Franco) for a job at a shooting range (owned by Ed Harris) and then becomes intimate with Lou (Kristen Stewart), a manager at Crater Gym, who gets her steroids in order to participate in a competition in Las Vegas ... but when Lou's sister Beth (Jena Malone) is nearly beaten to death by J.J., her husband, the ladies want revenge.  It's one thing for all the men in this to be abusive monsters, but the female characters are honestly no better - it's a Coen Brothers-esque exercise in 'quirky nihilism' that sits there lifelessly until director Glass attempts to "punch" it up with lesbian sex, graphic violence (dead bodies are consistently being bundled up) and various transgressive moments, like Jackie imagining she's vomiting up Lou or the movie unexpectedly morphing into Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.  This was supposedly a "success" at the Sundance Factory, but I wonder if it's for the "treatment" of the (weak) "material" or because of gratuitous pandering to its very vocal and "modern" audience (where heterosexuality is viewed as "violent" but homosexuality is "pure").