Antonio Nimertis 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 ...

rzemph Ignoring the music - which you feel you've heard a thousand times before - the first few minutes of this actually dupe you into thinking it might just be watchable. It isn't. The characters and their flimsily made-up backgrounds and motivations are implausible at best, which is not helped by the terrible hamming of the male actors. The whole thing soon deteriorates into Hollywood-style teen horror at its cheapest and most cliché-ridden. In short, rubbish.

milosz-skow 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.

ernesti 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.