Livid (French: Livide), 2011.
Written and Directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury.
Starring Chloé Coulloud, Félix Moati, Jérémy Kapone, Catherine Jacob, Béatrice Dalle and Chloé Marcq.
SYNOPSIS:
A young care worker is employed to look after an old woman in a coma in a vast and desolate mansion and learns that the house is rumoured to have great riches hidden inside. Breaking in at night with two friends, she discovers a much darker secret…
This may knock me down in many critics’ estimations (and hurt any chance I may have for writing for Sight & Sound Magazine), but I’ve never been the biggest fan of French cinema. I don’t know what it is, but there is a certain je ne se qua (pun intended) that turns me off from anything the country produces. And while I am still sticking to my guns, haunted house horror Livid is a very, very good movie that has piqued my interest back into French horror.
For starters, the film is genuinely creepy and gets is scares through visuals rather than the ‘peek-a-boo’ horror that American cinema has resorted to over the years. From its opening moments, which are at times striking, to the incredibly difficult to sit through final act, Livid doesn’t let up and can be a horrid experience for those who have a weak stomach for this kind of action. Many scenes reminded me of the Silent Hill video games and you’ve got to wonder whether the filmmakers were inspired by the visceral images that series produced.
Secondly unlike a lot of the more recent horror movies produced the characters in Livid are not there to simply die. Lucie (played perfectly by the gorgeous Chloe Coullod) and brothers William and Ben (Felix Moati and Jeremy Kapone respectively) all have perfectly crafted characters with individual reasons to break into the house be it freedom, curiosity or simple greed. Because of this great characterisation, you get invested in their actions and subsequent consequences. It’s a testament to the film along with its superb on-set special effects that put this a step above modern horror films.
If I did have some critique about the movie however is that it doesn’t offer up a lot of answers and poses more ‘WTF’ moments than it really needs to. By the time the conclusion of the movie rolls around, you get the feeling that the writers were just making stuff up for no rhyme or reasons just to facilitate an ending. ‘WTF’ moments can be good in movies (especially horror movies) and a non-comitial ending can be interesting (see Donnie Darko), but here it just feels flat and raises far too many questions for it to be entirely satisfying.
It’s a shame that a lot of English speaking audiences won’t give foreign language movies the time of day through simple laziness as Livid is well worth checking out despite its flaws. The acting is great, the story is intriguing and the effects are outstanding. I winced several times, gasped a couple more and got very vested into the action only to feel let down by a lacklustre ending. Livid is a very French movie and should be commended for a lot of what it’s doing, but a thorough re-drafted ending could have pushed this into a little known classic.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
P.S. I apologise for using the term ‘WTF’. Not only did I use it once, I used it twice and that really is unforgivable. But that is what I said out loud while watching the movie.
Luke Owen is a freelance copywriter working for Europe’s biggest golf holiday provider as their web content executive.
Originally published August 13, 2012. Updated April 11, 2018.
