A24's surreal crime thriller Kristen Stewart's return to the thriller genre weaves a tangled web of obsession, violence, and family drama using a combination of grimy realism and the dreamlike neon glow of the Southwestern United States in the 1980s. Two young women, Lou (Stewart) and Jackie (Katy O'Brian) fall in love, but their relationship is complicated by a series of violent events that spiral out of control, helped along by Lou's diabolical gun-running father (Ed Harris).

There is what seems to be a fairly pure romance at the heart of Love Lies Bleeding, but as Jackie and Lou's relationship unravels and bodies start piling up, doubt is cast over whether there is anything pure or good about any of the characters involved. Director Rose Glass (Saint Maud) plays with heavy metaphors throughout the movie, and doesn't shy away from putting a dark and twisted filter on reality to do it. The film's ending only confuses the line between fantasy and reality even further, and leaves plenty of room for interpretation.

What Happens In Love Lies Bleeding's Ending

Lou And Jackie Get To Ride Off Into The Sunrise

After nearly escaping the police officer that her father sent to kill her, Lou storms into her father's mansion to confront him and free Jackie. The two reconcile before they separate so that Jackie can escape the approaching FBI agents while Lou seeks her father, but Lou Sr. shoots her in the leg before she can take any sort of revenge. He proceeds to torture her by poking the bullet hole and definitively refutes Lou's claims that he killed her mother by saying that she left because of what the two of them did (referring to their past criminal activities).

Love Lies Bleeding debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024 as part of the Midnight programming, which is typically reserved for horror and experimental films.

Just as he is about to kill Lou, Jackie's muscles start to grow as they have at other times in the previous weeks. However, this time she keeps growing until she is literally 50 feet tall, and easily plucks Lou Sr. off of Lou and pins him to the ground. Lou briefly contemplates killing her father before resolving to leave him for the FBI agents. The two women, both now giant-sized and wearing sequined outfits, run away through the clouds.

The two drive through the night in Lou's truck, stopping only when Lou realizes that Daisy, who she believed was dead in the truck bed, begins to struggle. Jackie is asleep, and instead of waking her, Lou strangles Daisy and begins to haul her body out into the desert on her own. Her struggle to do so is played for one final dark laugh given Lou's relative lack of strength.

Did Jackie Ever Really Grow?

Jackie's Transformations Throughout The Movie Are Heavily Symbolic

At different points throughout Love Lies Bleeding, Jackie's muscles briefly bulge to unbelievable proportions before returning to their normal size. Her final transformation into a giant is presented similarly, and it's clear that it's meant to be symbolic even if it's presented as reality, with both Lou and Lou Sr. shown looking upwards at Jackie as if she was 50 feet tall. Jackie's growth is a metaphor for her own confidence and freedom from insecurity; at the end of the movie, both she and Lou see her as a giant because she fully believes in her own strength.

Her purest, giant-like form isn't a product of steroids, it's a product of her own self-confidence.

When Jackie first meets Lou Sr., she tells him that she doesn't like guns and prefers to rely on her own strength instead. That's a driving force behind her actions throughout the movie. Where she had previously become a bodybuilder naturally through hard work, she turns to steroids so that she can continue to protect herself literally and metaphorically. Unfortunately, that obsession with increasing her strength comes with consequences. Her purest, giant-like form isn't a product of steroids, it's a product of her own self-confidence. She is the most complete version of herself, partially thanks to Lou's love for her.

How Was Daisy Still Alive?

She Somehow Survived Being Shot In The Face

The danger of obsession is an important theme throughout Love Lies Bleeding, and nowhere is it more prevalent than with Anna Baryshnikov's character, Daisy. The young woman is infatuated with Lou despite being rebuffed on multiple occasions, and it's clear that she and Lou had a relationship in the past before they connect again later in the movie. Her obsession literally leads to her being shot in the face. While it's not immediately apparent when she is first shot, the bullet enters her face at a point where it doesn't hit her spinal cord or brain.

She was able to at least lift her head up at the end of the movie, and it's not clear how close to death she actually was. That's an important element of Lou's murder of Daisy: was it a mercy killing for someone on their deathbed or a cold-blooded murder of someone who could have made a full recovery? It's left ambiguous to intentionally cast a shadow of whether Lou was being kind or just as ruthless as her father when it came to tying up loose ends.

What Was Lou's Past Relationship With Her Father Like?

Despite Following A Separate Path, Lou Learned More From Her Father Than She Wanted To Believe

Lou's murder of Daisy is the final chapter of a narrative that was built over the course of Love Lies Bleeding. It's revealed that while she has chosen not to speak to her father, she has never been out from under his thumb. He owns the gym that she works at, and she in fact used to be an accomplice in the murderous gun-running business that he operates. As despicable as her past might have been, Lou is depicted as the movie's heroine because she chose to step away from that life.

She proves that she is willing to do anything, including hiding bodies and outright murder, to protect those she loves.

But she may be more like her father than she wants to it. She proves that she is willing to do anything, including hiding bodies and outright murder, to protect those she loves. In a twisted way, her father was doing the same for her when he plotted to pin the murders of JJ and Daisy exclusively on Jackie.

While it seems like she's chosen a different path when she spares her father and escapes with Jackie, her murder of Daisy confirms that even though she sees herself differently, Lou will do heinous things to protect herself and her loved ones.

What Actually Happened To Lou's Mom?

It's Left Intentionally Ambiguous, But There Is Evidence About Her Fate

In the final confrontation of Love Lies Bleeding, Lou accuses her father of murdering her mother just as he had so many of his other loose ends after she learned from the FBI that her mother intended to give them info on her father. He denies it, claiming instead that she left them both 12 years ago. Lou Sr. still has a portrait of the two of them hanging in his mansion, which is a small hint that he may be telling the truth about not killing her.

However, there is too much evidence to the contrary to believe what he claims. He doesn't hesitate to send a hit man after his own daughter when she threatens him, so there is little reason to believe Lou Sr. would have shown restraint with his wife in the exact same situation. The FBI claims that they haven't been able to find any trace of her since she approached them about providing intel about Lou Sr.'s activities, which is simply too big a coincidence. Everything shown about Lou Sr. in Love Lies Bleeding points to him having killed Lou's mother.

The Steroids' Importance In Love Lies Bleeding

They're The Most Important Metaphor In The Film's Overarching Theme

While it is presented in different forms, the central theme of Love Lies Bleeding is that "love is a drug." Addiction and obsession are present throughout, and they manifest differently in each character. Lou battles her nicotine addiction, Jackie is obsessed with getting stronger, Daisy is infatuated with Lou, and even Beth is emotionally tethered to her serial ab husband despite the many ways in which he wrongs her. The movie makes it clear that the result of obsession is often violence, and Jackie's steroids are the most poignant metaphor for this.

The steroids were holding Jackie back from being her strongest self because of their destructive nature, just as her obsession with Lou was.

Jackie is introduced to steroids in her first encounter with Lou, and her steroid use grows right alongside their love. Unfortunately, both of those elements develop into something unhealthy. Jackie spirals out of control with the steroids, which causes her to hallucinate and become more violent and aggressive, all of which come to a head at the bodybuilding contest in Las Vegas. She becomes obsessed with Lou to the point that after she shoots Daisy in the face, she pulls the trigger on Lou (the gun merely clicks and doesn't fire) because she had slept with Daisy.

As the ending of Love Lies Bleeding reveals, the steroids were holding Jackie back from being her strongest self because of their destructive nature, just as her obsession with Lou was. When she grows to her giant self in the end, she does it without the use of steroids, and she does it to protect the person she loves in Lou. Their relationship crosses the boundary from obsession into real, healthy love when they reconcile on the tennis court at Lou Sr.'s mansion, just as Jackie stops relying on steroids and leans into her own inner strength.

How Love Lies Bleeding Director Rose Glass Explains The Ending

The Surreal Conclusion Deals With Strength, Love, And The Intersection Between The Two

Director Rose Glass was candid about some of the more fantastical elements of the ending of Love Lies Bleeding in an interview with Inverse. Glass specifically referred to the scene in which the two women run away from Lou Sr.'s mansion as giants, saying, "...they feel elated and invincible, and all the things you can feel when you’re head over heels in love...even though it’s all kind of fairly absurdist." To Glass, it was important to have that surreal ending after building to it throughout the movie.

“We definitely wrote versions of the whole showdown, which did fully take place in the real world, and nothing surreal happened,” Glass says. “And we just kept finding it unsatisfying. We already had these kind of moments where her body started to hint at transformation and we needed to follow through on what we’d been flirting with in the fantastical realm.”

After watching the harrowing events unfold, which featured multiple grisly murders, play out in its entirety, the surreal ending serves as an exclamation point. As Glass mentions, it's the culmination of the metaphorical growth that occurs over the course of the narrative, and it provides a memorable conclusion to the story. Love Lies Bleeding effectively explores the meaning of strength, the dangers of addiction and the line between obsession and love with both subtle and overt metaphors in a raw, powerful story.

How The Love Lies Bleeding Ending Was Received

Some Critics Didn't Appreciate The Ambiguity

Love Lies Bleeding was the second feature film from director Rose Glass after the 2019 Saint Maud. It was yet another critical hit for the director, as evidenced by it landing a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes following the 92% of Saint Maud. However, like most movies with somewhat ambiguous endings, the final moments weren't as universally well received as the rest of Love Lies Bleeding seems to be.

That's not to say it was panned, either. There were plenty of critics and viewers who saw the ending as the perfect way to draw the narrative to a conclusion. This was especially true for some of the subtler notes of the climax, such as Lou starting smoking again, that rounded off some of the plot-adjacent aspects of the character's journeys but didn't necessarily factor into the main narrative. These finer touches added a level of depth to the final moments of Love Lies Bleeding that Rose Glass rightly received praise for.

However, there was a notable number of reviews that didn't speak of the ending in as positive a light. Some critics and audience found the ending to be too much of a head-scratcher, and felt that its ambiguous notes would have been better substituted for something with more clarity. That being said, even the negative responses to the ending still only mentioned it as a slightly disappointing note that doesn't ruin a phenomenal movie, so it's clear Rose Glass knew what she was doing when crafting the story of Love Lies Bleeding.

What The Director Said About The Challenges Of The Film's Ending

Rose Glass Had To Learn Some New Filmmaking Techniques For The Finale

The ending of Love Lies Bleeding certainly takes a lot of people by surprise, but the sudden break from reality also offered some very daunting filmmaking challenges for Rose Glass. Before this movie, Glass had only directed one other feature-length movie, the religious flick Saint Maud. That film was very small and intimate, so the final moment in Love Lies Bleeding with Jackie transforming into a giant required her to learn some new visual effects techniques.

Despite the other intense aspects of Love Lies Bleeding, Glass its it was these CGI moments that were the most daunting to her (via IndieWire):

“It was the first time I did anything where you’ve got a plate of actors reacting to tennis balls on sticks, which is hilarious. The footage of Ed and Kristen reacting and then shooting Katy against gray screen and comping that together … it was definitely quite nerve-wracking.”

Despite it being only a small moment in the movie, it would be interesting to see if Glass' work with visual effects on Love Lies Bleeding opens her up to explore that type of filmmaking in her next project.

Source: Inverse