MAY 4, 2020
GENRE: SLASHER, THRILLER
SOURCE: STREAMING (SHUDDER)
If you would have told me on my way out of the screening of Inside that I attended in 2007 that someday its filmmakers would make a slasher movie that would be free for me to watch for literal years before I finally watched it, I woulda told you that you were nuts (and also that you were a very strangely selective time traveler). Among the Living (French: Aux yeux des vivants) is the 3rd film from the Bustillo/Maury team that gave us that aforementioned classic (now officially cemented as one of my favorite horror films of the past twenty years), but the uneven Livide and misguided Leatherface left me hesitant about watching it, as I couldn't take another disappointment from a pair of filmmakers I briefly considered to be genre saviors.
Well, if nothing else, it's their 2nd best movie, and ironically it's only because of my now-lowered expectations that I was probably able to enjoy it to the extent that I did. Had it been their sophomore effort I would have been more disappointed, and if it was the first film of theirs that I ever saw I can't say I'd be clamoring to see what else they had done, but as is? It's pretty good! After the nutty Livide they went back to something more grounded, with a fairly straightforward tale of three boys who skip school and see something horrific in the woods, then get chased by the villain back to their homes. It oddly reminded me of a particular film that we can't mention by name (a house and clowns are involved, perhaps not in that order), but it also had some elements of the Chainsaw films as the killer has a demented family and has turned a dilapidated tourist spot (a movie studio in this case) into their lair. Is this what got them the Leatherface gig?
Like Livide, the first half is stronger than the second, buying it a lot of goodwill. After a prologue featuring Beatrice Dalle (one that allows her to pay gruesome and ironic tribute to her Inside character), we meet our trio of eighth grade boys, who are typical lads of that age, cracking dirty jokes and goofing off, drawing the ire of their teacher. On the last day of school they get detention for having a minor food fight at lunch, but using the "what can they do?" power of it being their final day, they decide to skip and go exploring in the woods instead. After causing a fire in a barn, they run to the abandoned Blackwood Studios, an ideal location for a horror movie as it has a variety of backdrops and an appropriately creepy feel.
It's there that they see a woman being tortured by a pair of hulking killers (Dalle's husband and son from the prologue), resulting in a quick chase around the place. Unfortunately, they escape the grounds relatively quickly and flag down some cops, who - as per the rule of horror films - find nothing and write them off as pranksters. The boys go home, get into their respective trouble with their parents, and then one by one the killer shows up at their homes and does... something! to all of them (more on that soon). The structure has two issues, one being that their homes are nowhere near as interesting to look at as the run down studio, and the other (more important) one is that the boys never interact again for the rest of the film. Their dynamic was one of the film's strongest points; they had distinct personalities and a fun rapport, but after the 40 minute mark they're stuck with their forgettable families.
And it's frustrating, because (here come the spoilers!) when the killer has isolated them (offing one's babysitter and another's abusive father) and closes in, we see their face as a white light blankets the screen and fades to the next scene, as if they were being "taken" as opposed to being killed. To me this seemed to promise a reunion, with the trio banding together to take on the beast they had unleashed, but... nope. They're dead, as apparently even these guys won't kill kids on screen (though realizing they were in fact dead made me chuckle as I assumed this was their way of ensuring that the film wouldn't get bought to be remade in the US, which was the fate of poor Livide, which remains unreleased here). Robbing us of the film's best asset is one thing, but to do so in favor of standalone setpieces that lack definitive conclusions is pretty weak.
That said, at least those setpieces are pretty good in their own right, particularly the third as it has a family of five at risk (the other two boys were only with single adults), and features one of the weirdest deaths I've seen recently, which might forever kill a viewer's foot fetish if they have one. There's also a mortifying reveal of the killer, which I found interesting because (spoiler again!) we discover he only LOOKS like a grown man but is actually only six years old, which re-contextualizes all of his earlier actions as a kid who doesn't know his own strength playing with "toys" (young people). The only physical evidence of his real age that we are offered is a microscopic baby penis, which was interesting because right now I'm reading a book called Damon which does the opposite thing with a similar case: a young boy with a growth disorder has all appearances of a child *except* for his junk, which is fully grown, so we're "treated" to descriptions of the thing nearly touching the floor because of his toddler-length legs. I swear... only I could manage to be entertained by TWO stories of murderous five year olds with penis issues in the same day.
If you're a Shudder subscriber there's no excuse not to watch it (especially *now*, lol sigh), but it'd help to think of it as "The followup to Livide" or something and keep your affinity for Inside at bay (at least as much as you can, as they seemingly reference it more than once). That movie was lightning in a bottle, it seems, and the mixed results for their following films (Leatherface was overcooked by producers, so we can asterisk the issues with that one and not chalk its failure entirely up to them) wouldn't be so disappointing if not for coming out of the gate so strong. Both this and Livide are pretty good movies with issues, which is, you know, how most horror movies are. If they can keep subsequent films at this "pretty good, at times great" level, that'd be fine by me. And besides, it took Wes 12 years to match Nightmare (with Scream) and Tobe close to a decade to live up to TCM (with Poltergeist, and don't even start) - perhaps their next masterpiece will be coming someday. I just have to stop expecting it.
What say you?
If you're on a French Extreme where are they now kick you should check out Incident in a Ghostland from the director of Martyrs. It's pretty much the same deal, a good horror film with issues.
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