There was a moment while shooting The loved Ones – a dementedly graphic Aussie horror set during a high school ball – when star Robin McLeavy developed a nervous twitch in her eye.

She was playing Lola, a shy, hormonal teen who takes bloody revenge on Xavier Samuel’s school stud after he spurns her invite to the dance. Everyone on set thought McLeavy was method acting. after all, she would listen to “a bit of Britney Spears just to get the party started” before each bloodthirsty take.

The twitch, however, was from exhaustion from playing a devil in a hot pink dress who kidnaps Xavier Samuel’s school stud and stages a grisly private ball in her family’s kitchen.

“It made me feel really crazy because I couldn’t control it,” says McLeavy, a 2004 NIDA graduate who’s done mostly stage shows until now. “I was really wired and manic every night when I went to bed, and felt a bit aggressive after we finished shooting.”

THE LOVED ONES REVIEW

“Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed being in that amazing pink dress, wearing high heels and wielding a drill.”

Physical and mental symptoms were standard for many on set of the nutty teen horror, which was dubbed an “instant cult hit and “Wolf Creek meets Pretty in Pink” ever since it won the people’s choice award at the Toronto Film Festival in 2009.

“Robin developed twitch,” says writer-director Sean Byrne. “Xavier said he was still depressed about five days afterwards because of all the grief and John [Brumpton, who plays Lola's father/accomplice] had nightmares.”

Shot in 27 days in the rural town of Kyneton, north of Melbourne, the comic horror was initially inspired by the most innocent of things.

“Strangely enough, it was inspired by my five-year-old niece,” Byrne smiles, “and I mean that in the cutest possible way. like most little girls, she was obsessed with the colour pink and in the middle of that magical stage of childhood where she believed her prince charming will come. I thought it would be exciting to transfer that innocent mindset into the body of an awkward, lonely teenager with raging hormones. I thought the sweet and the sour would make for a volatile combination.”

Byrne, who was raised on a steady diet of movies (his father is a film critic in Tasmania), said he was also inspired by Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 “which is so gleefully demented” and Tarantino “in the way that he juxtaposes comedy and violence”.

After a switch from law school in Tasmania to AFTRS film school in Sydney, Byrne, 37, said he wanted the modest $4 million horror to be “a fun experience” for audiences.

“I wanted it to start in arch-typical John Hughes teen territory and then slide into Lynchian madness. I thought of the cabin-in-the-woods sub-genre, the prom night sub-genre and the love-gone-wrong sub-genre. I also thought of the iconic female villains, like Kathy Bates in Misery and Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, and that whole obsessive love thing.”

Showing experience beyond his years, Byrne let his star run with the role.

“When I first read the script I thought what a wild opportunity to play this deeply disturbed yet playful sensual character,” says McLeavy. “I loved that she was the female character who was the villain yet in control of events rather than the screaming half-naked victim we so often see in horror films.”

“Then Sean passed on some books about real-life sickos like Jeffrey Dahmer, which was kind of him! I got really freaked out, but it led me to a book about how murderers can go on a huge high and then come crashing down. I thought that would be a good in-road for Lola when she has Xavier’s character in the kitchen. That room is her domain and she gets this rush of hormonal ecstasy. So I thought I’d go that playful way rather than the dark way, which would have left me a little psychologically disturbed by the end.”

Not that McLeavy isn’t up for disturbing others.

“I got to keep one of Lola’s hot pink dresses and I’m planning on wear it to a late Halloween party,” she smiles with glee.

Byrne, however, is simply relieved to finally see his vision come to life on screen.

“When I started The loved Ones I was 15 and now I’m 82,” he jokes. “It took so long to make it, so it’s nice to let it go of our baby and celebrate it. Now it’s all up to the box office, so please everyone go to see it!”

The loved Ones is now screening.