BODIES OF EVIDENCE

“Love Lies Bleeding.”

- RICHARD BRODY

Some filmmakers use the conventions of genre as guideposts as they lead viewers into strange territory, as Jordan Peele did with horror in “Get Out.” Others use the same markers to keep viewers on well-worn paths. The British filmmaker Rose Glass’s début feature, “Saint Maud,” from 2019—in which a young nurse pursues religious faith to the point of delusion—promised in its early scenes to be a modern classic of fanaticism along the lines of Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed.” But Glass pressed the action into the sensational tropes of horror and left the characters and the subject undeveloped. In her second feature, “Love Lies Bleeding,” she does something similar—but to different effect. The movie, shot from a script by Glass and Weronika Tofilska, is based on a good idea, a battle to reveal the hidden grip of a predatory small-town patriarch, but here, too, Glass’s reliance on genre conventions—in this case, those of neo-noir—prevents her from fully working out the narrative premise. The result is more entertaining this time, though, because Glass fashions the premise into such a clever, brisk, and twisty story.