On Friday nights, IndieWire After Darkish honors fringe cinema within the streaming age with midnight films from any second in movie historical past.
First, the BAIT: a bizarre style decide, and why we’re exploring its particular area of interest proper now. Then, the BITE: a spoiler-filled reply to the all-important query, “Is that this outdated cult movie really value recommending?”
Deserted without spending a dime on YouTube in 2011, author/director Fen Tian’s really rancid “Love on a Leash” has since slipped its collar to change into one of many web’s most infamous “unhealthy” films. A rom-com so baffling, it’s routinely described as one of many worst movies ever made. Sure, that’s a significant declare — even narrowed right down to different low-budget indies about magic, love, and part-time zoophilia.
However beginning with two minutes of lifeless air (yep, there’s no audio!), this cinematic oddity has as a lot chunk because it does bark. Over the past decade, “Love on a Leash” rose to cult standing much less via honest affection than the aimless endurance it noticed throughout area of interest streaming. From the favored “How Did This Get Made?” podcast to a sequence of bewildered Letterboxd opinions, it has been revisited endlessly by scattered audiences who broadly agree that the viewing expertise itself is bizarre and unsightly.
And but, this cracked meet-cute, between a struggling human lady and a poisonous, cursed man-dog, is extensively cited by individuals who admit they haven’t seen it recently… or ever. The story’s gnarly status arrived nicely earlier than most viewers did, having been thrust into the precise second movie bros had been obsessively attempting to find the following “The Room” on-line. Now, a decade later, the query that lingers is whether or not “Love on a Leash” is the proper of unhealthy to maintain at residence, or the type of misbegotten mutt that ought to’ve stayed misplaced?
When a cursed golden retriever named Prince, who generally transforms right into a human man named Alvin Flang (voiced by Stephen Kramer Glickman, embodied by Aneese Khamo), pursues a relationship together with his reluctant new proprietor, Lisa (Jana Camp), what may play out as a whimsical fantasy as an alternative unfolds as a queasy portrait of home manipulation. Hostile to viewers and profoundly tone-deaf in its politics, “Love on a Leash” isn’t simply man’s greatest pal gone unhealthy. It’s an exceptional knock towards canine-kind.
Should you had plans for an uncomfortable Valentine’s Day anyway, watching “Love on a Leash” enables you to do it on function. A part of what makes it such an uneasy sit is its sincerity. Tian’s technical limitations are apparent from that radio-silent first act, however so is an eerie sense of perception within the story she’s telling.
Not like “The Room,” which benefited from Tommy Wiseau’s aggressive movie star myth-making and lack of self-awareness, Tian vanished from the narrative round her movie. The result’s an virtually reluctant cult object with no handler — probably lovable however with a manginess that leaves you uncertain whether or not to snigger, cringe, or get it checked for rabies. -OF
“Love on a Leash” (2011) is on the market to stream without spending a dime on YouTube.
The Chew: The place’s a Waymo When You Want One?
Usually, after we see a canine onscreen, there’s at all times this lizard-brain response to sympathize with that canine. However at precisely one minute, 35 seconds into “Love on a Leash,” the opening credit voiceover (I actually didn’t assume we might be beginning this story from a canine POV and that’s on me) instructs some people-petting Prince, the person was a canine who can nonetheless flip into a person at night time, to “Lay off, man, I’m not GAY.” And I turned on this canine. I turned on this canine so fucking laborious, Ali.
What follows is, so far as I’m involved, a cautionary story worthy of the morality performs of Medieval Europe. A bewildering world of magic springs and fart jokes, the place a good virgin (named Lisa) toils below the burdens of working in a thrift store and proudly owning a inexperienced VW bug as all serfs of the 2010s absolutely did. She battles the temptations of a shape-changing satan (Prince the Canine, extra like Prince OF DARKNESS) meant to attract her from Christ, after which suffers the horny, horny penalties inherent to a girl’s nature: falling from grace into sin (and likewise some gentle bondage).
I’ll say this for “Love on a Leash”: If this film has a joke, it tells it. It’s bursting on the seams with a relentless, middle-school enthusiasm for setups and gags and “South Park”-inspired one-liners. It’s looking for essentially the most playful, inventive methods to discover its core idea, which isn’t a factor you may say about movies with a lot bigger budgets and extra, um, polished storylines. However man, you gotta give me one thing originally to not hate this fucking canine. Each time Prince crossed the road, I used to be rooting for the automobiles. —SS
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