Love Kills attempts to be many things, all at the same time. It tries to be a testimony of how men have a natural tendency for ruining every good thing. Then there’s this bold narrative shift, where it goes suddenly non-linear during the third act. The start of it feels like a candy-coated rom-com. But by the end, it becomes a whole different bloody beast. The good part about all this is the movie pretty much aces everything. It is quite incredible from the opening minute, and it stays that way till the end. Obviously, it only works if you’re into pulp and dig deadpan humor like I do. We’re going to take a closer look at the whole thing in this article, and I am genuinely excited about doing that.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the movie?
You think perfect couples don’t exist? Just look at Lia and Milo. They’re cute together; their vibe matches with each other, and their sex life is amazing—what more could you possibly ask for? He’s a talented photographer, and she sells homemade jewelry. Although Lia’s real passion is dancing, she is quite serious about it. Maybe the only problem in their life is their weird roommate Brianna, who makes a lot of noise while making noodles at night, always keeps an excessive amount of bananas on the kitchen counter, and vapes inside the apartment. However, when Lia asks nicely, Brianna promises to not do any of that again, and she actually follows it. Once the premise is established, you know something needs to happen in order to get this thing going. And the movie does that by taking Milo out of the scene for a while. He has to return home and look after his sister because of an emergency situation, which means Lia has to live with their freak (they actually call Brianna that behind her back) roommate for the time being.Â
What is going on with Brianna?
Brianna might seem all chill and cool, but life is not quite a bed of roses for her. Lia finds out about that when Brianna’s hotheaded sugar daddy, a guy called Cashmeer, pays a visit one night. The movie never actually makes it clear what Cashmeer does (not that it’s a necessity), but my guess would be he’s just a guy with a lot of money that he makes by running some shady business. Brianna eventually lets Lia know that she used to be a drug addict and Cashmeer saved her from dying in the street. But their relationship clearly remains transactional. Upon seeing Cashmeer pinning Brianna against the wall and choking her, Lia stands up for her roommate. In the days that come after, Lia starts hanging out with Brianna, which makes her realize that the girl is not at all the freak she thought. Thanks to Brianna, she gets to go to exciting parties, meet a lot of people, and have interesting conversations about things like polyamory. On the surface, this might just appear as thrill-seeking, but Lia genuinely seems to enjoy the experience. It’s like Milo’s absence has suddenly opened this door in her life with many things behind it that she was missing out on previously. That’s never a good thing for a relationship, just saying!
Lia doesn’t even mind accompanying Brianna to Cashmeer’s, so that Brianna gets to take a day off. Cashmeer, however, is in no mood to allow her that, and while he gets to business with Brianna, Lia has to deal with Cherry and Brandy, two other girls who have the same deal with the guy. Later that day, Lia and Brianna go to deliver this package for Cashmeer to a guy who calls himself Jaquan and is very likely a drug dealer. Once that’s over, the duo has quite the moment in the car. Not that anything happens other than Lia promptly taking Brianna’s fry away, mouth to mouth, but you do realize that something has started brewing here.
What happens to Brianna?
Did you see a romance happening between Lia and Brianna at the start of Love Kills? I bet not. But not only do the two of them fall so hard for each other, it even reaches the point where Brianna decides to cut Cashmeer out of her life and marry Lia. Have we forgotten about Milo’s existence? Not quite. But the very erotic, fiery chemistry between Lia and Brianna compels you to cheer for them. It becomes difficult to hate Lia for cheating on her ‘perfect’ boyfriend, considering how happy she is. I’m not normalizing cheating here, only saying this in the context of this movie—if you know what I mean!
While falling in love with her roommate (despite having a boyfriend, who also lives with her) was not in Lia’s control, she does deserve to be blamed for not accepting that she is, in fact, cheating. There’s this scene where we see Lia confessing to her dance instructor Bloom about being unfaithful to Milo, but adding a ‘sort of’ before the c-word. Anyway, Milo was always supposed to reappear at some point (even though some of you were probably praying for a miracle). But the worst possible time for him to return is when Lia and Brianna are literally doing it in the bedroom. Lia barely manages to keep it under wraps for Milo, for the time being. However, their vibe is no longer the same, which is a given. Milo is smart enough to understand something is up with Lia, but he can’t pinpoint it. He does notice the influence of Brianna on his girlfriend—Lia adding pink streaks to her hair is a huge giveaway—that concerns him. Meanwhile, it becomes increasingly difficult for Lia and Brianna to sneak around Milo, since he lives in the same house. Lia also fails to find the courage to spill the beans to Milo and even ends up having sex with her boyfriend, which upsets Brianna, leading the two to get into a major fight. Well, it is Brianna who’s mostly taking it out on Lia, and under the circumstances, she has every right to. Briana storming out of the apartment with Lia pleading with her to not leave is quite heartbreaking—especially because she goes missing afterwards, and you eventually find out that she has died. But this is where Love Kills changes gears, and by the end, you understand things were not quite how they seemed.
Did Milo kill Brianna?
Alright, since Love Kills deliberately adopts the non-linear storytelling format in the third and final act, I feel it would be best if I lay down what really happened in a chronological manner. After getting out of the apartment (post-fight), Brianna has no choice but to return to Cashmeer. She knows there’s no other chance for her surviving other than that. So she digests the humiliation and does everything Cashmeer asks for in order to please the man—guy has real freaky erotic kinks, by the way. After going through that horror of a day, Brianna is devastated, but her day gets instantly better upon receiving a voice message from Lia. She has finally decided to leave Milo for Brianna and apologizes for not doing it before (and also having sex with him). Briana responds to Lia by recording a video that is mostly about how much she loves her and why she got hurt by Lia’s actions. She returns to the apartment the next day, and only after that does she go missing. Quite naturally, Lia and Milo seek help from the police when Brianna doesn’t return even after a week. When the police routinely ask about the last time Lia and Milo saw Brianna, Milo reminds Lia of this text message she received from Brianna almost a week back, where Brianna assured her she would return. The obvious question here is how would Milo know about it (Lia wouldn’t share her private communication with Brianna with him, if you think about it)!
Days go by, and Brianna doesn’t return, and the police have no option but to summon both Lia and Milo to the station and separately interrogate them. They break down the news of Brianna’s death and also their awareness about the affair (thanks to video footage from the apartments’ CCTV) between her and Lia. Even though she initially denies it and keeps stating that she and Brianna weren’t even friends, upon realizing it’s futile to hide it from the police, Lia comes clean. She does maintain her stance about not having anything to do with Brianna’s death. So does Milo, who keeps saying that he barely even knew Brianna—which is quite the truth.
After returning to the apartment, Lia and Milo have a confrontation where it becomes all but clear that Milo is aware of Lia’s feelings for Brianna—even though Lia still doesn’t mention it verbally. However, now that Brianna is gone, Lia and Milo come to the conclusion that it is probably best to try putting effort into the relationship and rebuilding it (always the worst mistake a couple commits to save their already dead relationship). They both commit to that except Milo now has this urge to empty his chest to Lia, now that they’re starting afresh. Even though Lia doesn’t want to hear it, Milo goes on about how he was jealous and heartbroken when he accidentally saw Lia and Brianna making out at the garage. That’s acceptable, but what he did after was absolutely not. It’s one thing to get sad when your girlfriend cheats on you, but viciously murdering the person she’s cheating with is a whole different evil game. I suppose Milo could not accept the fact that Lia would cheat on him—a talented, good-looking man—with someone like Brianna, who he clearly looks down upon. He thought taking her out to the desert under the facade of a professional shoot and threatening her would do the trick. But Brianna refused to back down, which only made sense given Lia had made up her mind about leaving Milo. Her apology to Milo was heartfelt, but his fragile male ego was hurt, and he reacted the worst possible way—by bashing her head to a pulp.
Lia was ready to try it out with Milo, but obviously the revelation was too much for her. She still offered Milo the chance of escaping before the police come, but the guy starts showing his real self when he asks Lia to not tell anyone about it. What you need to notice here is Milo not requesting but expecting Lia to not go legal on him. He even ends up saying that Lia is the reason he had to do it, as if Lia asked him to kill Brianna! If that’s not all, he blabbers about having so many chances of cheating on Lia but never doing it. How dare Lia not give him an award for that?
In a way, Brianna’s death is on Lia, as she probably could have saved her if she had discarded Milo earlier. In her defense, she couldn’t do it because she (and the audience) genuinely believed Milo was a good man, and she didn’t want to give him a heartbreak right after he came back. But now she has had enough, and there’s no way she’s not going to the police. Milo tries one last time to convince her that telling the truth might implicate her as well, which only proves deep down he’s an entitled idiot who thinks his girlfriend is stupid (when it’s just the opposite). One might wonder why Lia would open the bathroom door after locking herself in (to save herself from Milo until the police come), but I suppose she did it out of whim. Maybe she wanted to take the revenge by herself. Considering she’s weaker than Milo and he’s a psychopath, that seems quite foolish. Had the police not come in time, Lia could have had a tragic ending, which would have made things really sour. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen, and Milo is shot to death while trying to choke Lia. The world is freed of one garbage man, and Lia has another chance at life. She does have to bear the trauma, though; there’s no way around it.
