Rose Glass’ follow-up to gross-out horror Saint Maud is a retro, backwater-thriller featuring Kristen Stewart as Lou, a 1980s gym manager. She ignites an intense relationship with new-in-town bodybuilder Jackie (Katy M O’Brian) who hopes to display her formidable physique at a Vegas convention, but Lou irresponsibly hooks her lover on mind-frying ‘roids. 

Lou’s domineering father (Ed Harris) runs a gun range that’s barely a cover for a deadly smuggling ring, employing JJ (Dave Franco), the loutish husband of Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone). JJ beats his wife regularly and an increasingly wacky Jackie aims to impress Lou by taking revenge on the thug.

Opening on a backed-up toilet indicates a fierce desire to repel, and Love Lies Bleeding repeats Saint Maud’s thematic contrast of grotty, grim reality with delicious, gloopy madness. Glass grafts her body-horror tropes onto a traditional thriller narrative, co-written with Weronika Tofilska, that generates enough tension and incident to compensate for what it lacks in surprises. O’Brian and Stewart strike sparks as lovers on the edge, and Harris plays to type as a memorably malevolent antagonist.

Unfortunately, such gory, visceral, hallucinatory scenes like Jackie vomiting up Lou’s body onto a Vegas stage or a surreal, super-sized climax provoke laughs, and Love Lies Bleeding lacks any strong moral hook to engage with. The best of it is Clint Mansell’s throbbing electro score, providing the unifying glue for a slick, grotesque thriller that plays like the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple, but warped on steroids.

Love Lies Bleeding reviewed at GFT, as part of Glasgow Film Festival; in cinemas from Friday 19 April.