The Loved Ones

Where some home market releases go for blanket-coverage completism, offering more commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes and sundry extras than anyone, critics aside, is ever likely to watch in toto, The Loved Ones makes a virtue of its more minimal approach. Not only do the interviews with cast and crew have the concision of soundbites, but their brevity is openly advertised by titles showing the duration of each contribution in seconds rather than minutes.

Writer/director Sean Byrne claims that the idea for The Loved Ones was "born out of a fusion of Carrie (1976) and The Evil Dead (1981)", and rightly stresses the film's "dramatic integrity". Robin McLeavy (Lola) declares her delight that "the main villain was a girl"; Xavier Samuel (Brent) suggests that the film is "a drama disguised as a horror"; Ozzie genre favourite John Brumpton (Eric) relates how emotionally draining the shoot was for him; and Jessica McNamee (Mia) discusses the personal challenge of playing a self-loathing, deeply damaged goth. All of this is very short and sweet.

The only other extra is one minute and thirty seconds of B-roll, showing Byrne at the helm and Brent receiving bloody make-up. It is hardly exhaustive, but then, The Loved Ones is the sort of film that can speak for itself.