What a waste of my time!!!

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Brilliant and touching

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

A friend of mine used to say that on horror movies, thriller, etc, the secret is to... fear before actually get scared ... meaning that if the director has managed the most difficult of all, i.e. to be ready for a touch on the shoulder that would shake from the chair, everything else is simpler ... and I say more, fun and entertainment in this dark, moist and suffocating universe is born from the toxicity of the ' greenhouse ' with the ' morbidly plants ' ... and, I think, the French know the way maybe because they invented it... the whole shock is not limited to the terrifyingly vulgar or the blatant repulsive ... it goes deeper, soaks you, makes you feel ... insecure ... I think this is the most astonishing and rare that very few craftsmen succeeded in film history... the viewer feels the dorsal shiver constantly and even every time that is thinking back on the movie ... No matter how many years go by ... Let's not be exaggerated ... this movie conquers no such specific tops... What I believe it leaves is not creepy or shivery but more a. .. bitter breeze ... a taste of brackish water on lips ... something from ... elsewhere ... that strives to become familiar ...

The now seemingly dead and buried subgenre of "New French Extremity" that gave us horror classics like "Inside", "Martyrs" and "Frontier(s)" was spearheaded almost completely by first-time filmmakers. Movies that the directing duo of Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo would go on to make after "Inside" provide us with a few clues as to why "New French Extremity" is now apparently extinct; it seems other first-timers of the NGE were also unable to follow up their early excesses.The film is about a young trainee nurse who does her rounds with an older woman and is taken to the house of a comatose former ballet teacher. The older nurse confides in her young charge that the comatose woman may or may not have "treasure" hidden in the house. Unable to contain the burden of this privileged information, the young nurse immediately tells her criminal spouse about it, and with his moronic brother in tow, the threesome break into the house, looking for the "treasure". This is a fairly basic set-up for a horror film, but it takes about one-third fo the movie's run-time to get going. Ample time, then, to think about some unanswered questions the movie raises, and would have been better advised to distract us from sooner. How, for example, does the older nurse even know about the "treasure"? Why does she tell the younger woman about it? This last question may be forgivable, because it is possible that if she DID know, she might tell; many people can't resist the urge to gossip. But the biggest question for me, which made me forget those two, is why these three criminals are willing to break into somebody's house for the vague promise of "treasure", which could be anything, might not even exist, and they might never find. Our protagonist is not supposed to be stupid. She must know that once their breaking and entering has been discovered, she would be the prime suspect. Hell, the case is pretty open and shut, really: not only was she just let into the woman's house and shown around, the older nurse can also testify that she told her about the treasure, and then the house was broken into, almost immediately! Ridiculous.Anyway, this movie isn't a true crime thriller, it's a horror movie, and that's what those that have seen it want it to be. So, forgetting those details, as a better filmmaker might have allowed us to: what of the horror? On that score, "Livide" is kind of in the middle between "Inside" and "Among the Living", the directors' next movie, in that "Inside" made perfect sense, "Among the Living" made very little, and "Livide" makes less sense than the first, and more than the latter... just barely.While in the house, inevitably, the idiotic thieves are attacked by things/people who were remarkably absent when the nurses visited the house earlier that same day. There are a few toothless jump-scares, in which I again found myself questioning the behaviour of the people on screen, rather than feeling what they should have been feeling. Take, for example, one of the movie's earliest attempts at a scare, in which the criminals run across what looks like a group of children sitting around a table in the darkness. In a house that is supposed to be empty save for an elderly, bedridden woman, the apparition of children sitting in the dark ought to be scarier than it was, either to the characters on screen, or to us, watching them. It gets worse, though - after deciding that these figures are not real human beings, the head of one abruptly snaps around with the speed of a bear-trap. Yeah, they get scared, but again, nowhere near as much as real people would. After coming across something this bizarre, wouldn't you call it a day and quit? What else might be lurking in the shadows?Like I said, the characters are idiots.Obviously this is a horror movie, and almost all horror movies have characters who must ignore clear warnings and threats in order for the horror to do its thing. But in better movies, this is handled in such a way that we do not shake our heads at the protagonists' stupidity.Toward the end, I found myself wishing that "Livide" had been made by another filmmaker; mayble Guillermo del Toro. The reason being that it features some interesting, disturbing images, like a young woman with her eyes stitched closed. It is also a fairly original take on the appearance of the vampire - no fangs here, just skin that looks like plaster.The main problem with the movie is that it seems the filmmakers had no idea how to use their more interesting plot details, which are glimpsed in flashes of exposition that would be tantalising in skilled hands, but here seem like deliberate attempts to distract us from the story, which starts silly and ends nonsensical.

I watched Livid with high hopes. I had heard this was poetic, a horrific love letter, etc... Basically, the opposite of Inside. While Inside had suspense and outrageous gore, I was never impressed beyond that material. There were very few visuals that struck me; I just did not FEEL the direction. I feel it could have been directed by anyone. That is not to say I have not seen it a few times, and would recommend it to gore hounds, and even watched it with friends just to see their reaction to the horror on screen. I thought the directors had "turnt" up their directorial flair for Livid... alas, I was wrong.This film is easily divided into thirds: the first third, we are introduced to Lucie, our protagonist. The character just isn't compelling. Catherine Jacobs fares MUCH better, but after the first third, she's basically gone. Lucile's male companions are more engaging, despite being caricatures-- at least they have some charisma, injecting much needed energy. Beatrice Dalle is amazing (no surprise there), despite not enough screen time. The second half begins the exploration of the mansion, and suffers the same fate as Lucile: it's just not compelling! Or scary. Or beautiful. Things needed to make this work, you are not there.I enjoyed the last third, as the blood flows, and directors begin to be creative. Yet, it's all slightly ruined by the flat direction. The first "attack" should have been fantastic (fantastique) but it's just not enough. The ending, I have read, to some is overblown. It is. But this is the only time the fantastic enters the picture, along with the flashbacks. But it's just not enough! What excited me most about Livid was it was compared to Lucio Fulci's The Beyond in it's sort of narrative structure, where the film is driven by fantastic images and suspense-- the story isn't unimportant, it just does not make sense. A does not lead to B, but rather 8. It's the supernatural, it doesn't need to make sense. But Livid TRIES to make sense, another of it's failings, because by the end it no longer attempts to ground itself. I would usually love that, but it's not enough.

I was interested into seeing the director's latest film and i was quite surprised because it was more watchable than the debut he made with "The inside" in 2007. I just simply couldn't watch it as it seemed to have nothing else going on but violence.Livide is a different story. It is a well-made supernatural horror fantasy which left me questioning what i had just seen. It isn't plot driven and it's very linear from start to the end with not so many surprises. I knew from the first moment that the old woman in coma was going to go after the treasure hunters and that it may end in a violent blood shed. So basically the plot isn't original at all but that's not quite so bad because the movie itself is visually stunning, claustrophobic, atmospheric, quite frightening and stylish. That's all what a horror movie actually has to achieve and it just did that.There are connections with the dance academy of Freiburg that was featured in Argento's Suspiria which may be picked up by those who have seen the movie.I found the ending quite silly but however very symbolic and the movie itself has strong symbolism in it. It has something to do with life in itself how we are put to do things against our own will and just like the ballerina was forced to dance until she broke inside, there may and will be difficulties in life but in an order to get through the bad times we must rely in others and help each other. The whole movie is full of this kind of symbolism but that was just the main idea which i think is the whole point. That's not bad for a horror movie as there are dozens of other movies in this genre which just don't make any statements of this kind. Luckily the European cinema doesn't seem to lack any of that... but Hollywood does.In the end even though there isn't much of a plot there is so much more originality in this movie in other aspects so that it is not just another movie.