I think of the ramifications for many of the studios have been remaking horror movies and thrillers for so long, it tends to stifle original attempts at doing something with the genre, and possibly neutering them. Perhaps in the collective disgust of the latter, that means people will want more of the former, but with the film Love Me, there is little to suggest that anything else may be going on.

Written by Kat Candler (Jumping Off Bridges) and directed by Rick Bota (Hellraiser: Hellworld), the film's setting is at an apparent private school straight out of a Gilmore Girls episode. The first scenes of the film show a girl walking home from school, rebuffing the attempts of the anonymous driver of a muscle car, before we get the quick close-up to her screaming/disappearance. Flash forward three months and we see Sylvia (Lindsey Shaw, 10 Things I Hate About You, not THAT one) hanging out with her friends and running (almost literally) into Lucas (Jamie Johnston, Degrassi: The Next Generation), a quiet loner in the school hallway. They tend to hit it off rather well and develop a relationship, much to the dismay of Harry (Jean-Luc Bilodeau, Piranha 3DD), a friend of Sylvia's who wants to be more but does not muster the courage to act on it. As the Sylvia-Lucas relationship heightens, so does Harry's jealousy. And the continued investigation into the disappearance of the girl does not help matters.

The story tends to lay out the conflict between Lucas and Harry, along with Sylvia's feelings for Lucas, early and easily. The chemistry between Sylvia and Lucas admittedly is fun to watch, even if it means a default shot of Harry staring at Sylvia through a classroom window, which happens several times, something (considering Harry's glare) we get the message of early on. Even as Sylvia's friends are learning more about Lucas and finding out his background may be shady, you seem to kind of know who made the girl in the opening scenes disappear, the only question is 'Why?'

From a performance perspective, the three young actors are without any noticeable complaint. They use the material as best as they can and their abilities are not hampered that much. However, in between the actors and the story, I had the overwhelming feeling that what is accomplished in 90 minutes of Love Me could be (and more than likely has been) done in a tightly-written 43 minutes of any episodic television produced by the CW.

If one was compelled to make something similar to Love Me, at least go all out and revel in the derivative nature, or take things into a new interpretation, even if it may fail wildly. This just tends to lay there and not do anything, and for something that appears to be the bastard child of Cruel Intentions meets Some Kind of Wonderful, one would hope for something better than the end product this puts out there.

You're going to get an AVC-encoded 1.78:1 high-definition presentation from Anchor Bay, and the overall results are fine. It does not seem that way at first, because the film's opening titles over the first scenes in the movie tend to have a glossy, TV movie appearance to them, but the color palette is reproduced accurately and the image possesses solid detail in the foreground and background, and is free of DNR or other processing problems. All in all it is a natural looking image and may look better than the story deserves, but it works.

The disc comes with a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround track, with the overall result being solid. Dialogue is consistent through the feature, and the opening scenes tended to flirt with subwoofer activity, though it did not engage. Channel panning was not as prevalent as I would have liked, though directional effects are and make for a convincing, immersive listening experience. There is nothing that qualifies it as demo material, it just plods along and sounds as good as it will be given the production aspects.

Not too much, "Behind the Scenes" (7:14) is the closes thing to a making-of the film has, with interviews with the cast about the story and the roles they play, which "Stories on Set" (6:10) includes some flubs and recounts the general lighthearted nature of the shoot.

After subjecting myself to the experience of Love Me I felt angry. Not at myself, but at the world around me that had allowed, nay, encouraged, such a vision to be realized to begin with. Technically, it seems to be fine, though supplementally speaking it is pretty much as expected. You can certainly find better films elsewhere, do not waste your time with this.