My initial expectations were that this film would be a classic teenager-slaughter-haunted-house-screamer type of horror. All I knew about it was what was written in the description on IMDb. I didn't read the reviews or the message boards, fearing spoilers, and I didn't pay much attention to the rating either, as somewhere along the line of 7.0 tend to be the upper end of the scale for horror movies on IMDb.
I was wrong in my initial assumptions. The film is not a gore flick in a classic meaning of this term. Yes, there is quite a lot of blood, fresh wounds and bodily harm, but it is certainly not the main component of this film. And I'm not talking suspense or survival either. The main component of this movie is... *dramatic drum roll* ...writer/directors' poorly executed ideas! Don't get me wrong, it's symbolism in its best - there is a second and indeed a third bottom to this story. It is just so distractingly told it takes away all the immersion and replaces it with a feeling of... You know that feeling when after seeing a stand-up comedy show your friend starts re-telling one of the jokes that the comedian told, but for some reason it just doesn't sound very funny at all? It's THAT feeling - awkwardness mixed up with appreciation and contempt... sort of.
The story follows a young caregiver and her two male companions, as they make their way into an old woman's house, to acquire some of her possessions in a less-than-legal way. Without spoiling too much, I can tell that what follows is an interesting, though as I said poorly executed journey into the history of the house and its owners. There is bloodshed of course and a few loud-noise-sudden-movement type of scares, which are, sadly, predictable. But there is more bad news than good news I'm afraid. While the story is moving and original, the characters are underdeveloped and hard to relate to. Sometimes they act irrationally and not even in the classic "let's check this dark basement" kind of way - they just do weird things against all reason and in a ridiculously scripted manner. Some of the events, though evoke symbolic meanings, do not fit very well into the overall mood of the scene, or the film in general.
Acting is bad. There are only a couple of decent performances, and that's Catherine Jacob as Catherine Wilson and Chloé Marcq as Anna. The rest was just bad - especially Jérémy Kapone as Ben - even when afraid he just looks bored. Because of the poor acting and underdeveloped characters you never really connect with any of the protagonists.
There are of course good sides to the film as well - the story is interesting, the setting is atmospheric and very detailed. The mood is there for the most part and that is all extremely important for a horror movie to give the viewer what he wants: a piece of shiver-inducing entertainment.
In closing, I must say that as hard as it is to make even a half-decent horror movie, to make a horror movie that has as much depth and complexity as Livid is even harder. And because Livid pulls it off and manages to deliver a few scares here and there, it deserves at least some recognition.
Thank you for reading, and enjoy the film if you haven't watched it already.
I was wrong in my initial assumptions. The film is not a gore flick in a classic meaning of this term. Yes, there is quite a lot of blood, fresh wounds and bodily harm, but it is certainly not the main component of this film. And I'm not talking suspense or survival either. The main component of this movie is... *dramatic drum roll* ...writer/directors' poorly executed ideas! Don't get me wrong, it's symbolism in its best - there is a second and indeed a third bottom to this story. It is just so distractingly told it takes away all the immersion and replaces it with a feeling of... You know that feeling when after seeing a stand-up comedy show your friend starts re-telling one of the jokes that the comedian told, but for some reason it just doesn't sound very funny at all? It's THAT feeling - awkwardness mixed up with appreciation and contempt... sort of.
The story follows a young caregiver and her two male companions, as they make their way into an old woman's house, to acquire some of her possessions in a less-than-legal way. Without spoiling too much, I can tell that what follows is an interesting, though as I said poorly executed journey into the history of the house and its owners. There is bloodshed of course and a few loud-noise-sudden-movement type of scares, which are, sadly, predictable. But there is more bad news than good news I'm afraid. While the story is moving and original, the characters are underdeveloped and hard to relate to. Sometimes they act irrationally and not even in the classic "let's check this dark basement" kind of way - they just do weird things against all reason and in a ridiculously scripted manner. Some of the events, though evoke symbolic meanings, do not fit very well into the overall mood of the scene, or the film in general.
Acting is bad. There are only a couple of decent performances, and that's Catherine Jacob as Catherine Wilson and Chloé Marcq as Anna. The rest was just bad - especially Jérémy Kapone as Ben - even when afraid he just looks bored. Because of the poor acting and underdeveloped characters you never really connect with any of the protagonists.
There are of course good sides to the film as well - the story is interesting, the setting is atmospheric and very detailed. The mood is there for the most part and that is all extremely important for a horror movie to give the viewer what he wants: a piece of shiver-inducing entertainment.
In closing, I must say that as hard as it is to make even a half-decent horror movie, to make a horror movie that has as much depth and complexity as Livid is even harder. And because Livid pulls it off and manages to deliver a few scares here and there, it deserves at least some recognition.
Thank you for reading, and enjoy the film if you haven't watched it already.