gregsrants Review of Livid

Livid (2011)

Terrible film that is as confusing as it is wasteful

[2/10 · 13 September 2011]

Back in 2009, French filmmakers Alexandrew Bustillo and Julien Maury brought a small independent horror film to the Toronto International Film Festival. The movie was Inside, an incredibly bloody and frightening tale of a pregnant woman fighting off an attacker who has infiltrated her home. Inside helped contribute to a long string of superior French made horror films that included Martyrs, Frontier and High Tension. Bustillo and Maury came back to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011 to showcase their new horror film, Livid, a horrible mess of a film that left the audience stunned in numb WTF-ness. Livid begins by introducing us to Lucy (Chloé Coulloud), a cute looking young girl with two different colored eyes that is starting her first day as a caregiver alongside her mentor Mrs. Wilson (Catherine Jacob). They travel from home to home, administering medication to the elderly until they reach the home of Mr. Jessel (Marie-Claude Pietragalla). Here, Mrs. Wilson asks for Lucy to stay in the car believing the young apprentice to 'not be ready' for this one yet. But Lucy's curiosity gets the better of her and she soon follows Mrs. Wilson into the home where she is introduced to the comatose Mrs. Jessel lying on her bed with a oxygen mask on to assist with her breathing. Mrs. Wilson then tells Lucy of a treasure hidden somewhere in the home and this gives Lucy's boyfriend William (Serge Cabon) an idea when they discuss the workday over a drink at the local pub. William wants to break into the Jessel residence and steal from the coma stricken woman the fortune that would give himself, Lucy and brother Ben (Loïc Berthezene) a better life. The three travel to the old house later that night and break-in in search of their treasure. But what they encounter will be a home filled with taxidermy animals and a secret so deep that their revelation brings out elements of the supernatural. Whereas Inside was a masterpiece set inside the constrictive walls of a house and pitted two women against each other in a bold and bloody rage, Livid throws its protagonists into a house and then throws logic out the front door. The film includes vampires, ghosts, a serial killer, a murderous mother who looks like the ugly witch in Sleeping Beauty, and veil wearing children who like to beat and stab their victims to death. Bustillo and Maury don't just throw everything but the kitchen sink at their audience, they throw the whole kitchen at us too! The entire vampire angle just didn't work and although they implemented the whole 'sunlight is bad' rule, they pretty much ignore the rest in winging the story that Bustillo and Maury both penned. There were too many scenes that just didn't make sense – what's with the blue flame in the garden? Why is the house hovering in space? What's with the book that Lucy chooses and was Anna (Jessel's daughter that we are told was born mute and died years earlier) an angel at the end of the film? Worsening matters is the fact that Livid is just not very scary. It had one scene that force jumped the audience, but the remainder of any suspense or surprise came from the overbearing score that punctuated scenes that weren't scary enough to get a jolt out of its audience. Add two that where Inside and Martyr's went outside the normal conventions of the genre, Livid used the horror handbook for its step-by-step instruction. The characters are dumb (they bring only one flashlight to a robbery at night), they split up making them easier to pick off and they just don't act smart in situations that call for a bit of common sense. Bustillo and Maury really missed the mark on this one and they did nothing to help rectify the fact that French horror films are getting hard to finance as they discussed after the film's screening. Bustillo and Maury may still have a great future ahead of them. But as for now, all I will remember them for was one good film, and Livid was not it.