Among the Living (2014)

best movie i've ever seen.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Kids reluctantly go trick-or-treating to some run-down house. The door opens. It's the lady from Inside who is pregnant this time. Her husband is having some flashbacks presumably related to military duty. He was exposed to some gas that may genetically affect his descendants. Suddenly the woman takes a bat and smashes his head in. She then goes upstairs and complains about someone or something in the room. She's about to kill it, then the husband shows up and attacks her to protect whatever is in the room. She slits her throat and he removes the fetus from her body and leaves.So far so good. Two years later we meet three annoying troublesome teens. They run away from school instead of showing up for detention, smoke weed, try to burn down a barn, nearly kill the barn's owner with a hatchet. They go to an abandoned movie studio where they find a woman screaming in a car trunk. They call the police who find nothing. But we know someone lives in one of the studio buildings.The kids are returned to their parents. And eventually something shows up at each kids' house to kill the residents. We learn who is doing the killing and of course the final family will have to fight back.If this were a movie made by someone unknown it would be a bad movie but given that it was made by Bustillo and Maury makes it even worse. And Among the Living is unfortunately very bad. The movie never takes off, it never goes anywhere. After the intro, it creates zero tension, zero thrills. There is no central character, no one to root for. The villain is weak, too, lacks personality and doesn't look cool either. I counted one interesting death scene. I can't really think of a reason to recommend this movie.

You have to be given the chance of believing in a film to enjoy it. The film starts brutally and unexpectedly and the appearance of a Goonies-style gang of boys promises fun and adventures mixed up with horror. However all your hopes quickly dissolve into nothing when the characters begin to behave in, to put it simply, stupid ways. The feeling that I got as a spectator was that the directors thought of scenes they wanted to shoot and then forced the characters to do things to make them happen and move on to the next one. To me, that sort of decision can kill a movie. I'm all up for suspension of disbelief, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Among the Living soon becomes some sort of cross between Friday 13th and Goonies, but it doesn't quite work. Shame - I loved "Inside", I've been reading these French guys' magazine "Mad Movies" since I was 15 and I REALLY wanted to like this film... but I couldn't.

AMONG THE LIVING (2014) *** Zacharie Chasseriaud, Damien Ferdel, Fabien Jegoudez, Francis Renaud, Theo Fernandez, Anne Marivin, Beatrice Dalle, Chloe Coulloud, Dominique Frot. French filmmakers Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury create a knife-edge old-school horror film that echoes Carpenter's HALLOWEEN & early Cronenberg with a touch of Craven about a trio of tweens who on the last day of school come across an abandoned film studio open lot that has more in store for what they bargain for: namely a deformed, deranged murderous young man and his equally homicidal brute father who, once discovered of their existence, enact a vengeance of payback. Graphically violent and peppered with intense suspense and outrageous kills. Nifty homage to contemporary classic horror.

Today, directors Alexander Bustillo and Julien Maury returned to the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Films to introduce their newest effort, entitled "Aux Yeux des Vivants", which more or less translates in English as "Amongst the Living". Nearly everyone in the public was also present at this exact same spot a couple of years ago already, for the premiere of "À l'intérieur" a.k.a. "Inside", and thus we all knew to prepare for another potentially sickening and heart-wrenching horror film with explicit violence, disturbing atmosphere and nearly unendurable suspense. Bustillo and Maury are truly gifted and visionary young film makers who really understood the secret formula to genuinely terrifying and successful horror! They don't avoid any taboo subjects or sensitive themes and confront the viewers with their deepest fears and darkest nightmares. "À l'intérieur" entirely revolved on an extreme terror siege against a 9-months pregnant woman (with some of the cruelest torment sequences ever registered on film), while "Aux Yeux des Vivants" shamelessly handles about physically deformed children and shamelessly depicts uncompromising violence against innocent women and underage children. More importantly even, it's has been a very long time since I witnessed so many utterly intense and uncomfortable scenes of non-stop suspense. The usually always noisy and over-enthusiast crowd at the Brussels' Film Festival often turned very quiet and timid when gazing at some of the expanded and massively unnerving scenes where the young protagonists are stalked in their own houses. It's the last day of school before summer vacation and the troublesome trio Victor, Tom and Dan decide to leave early for a bit of exploring the countryside and committing a bit of random petty crimes like arson. They end up at the abandoned exterior film studios Blackwoods and witness how a masked figure drags a kidnapped woman out the trunk of a car and into an underground lair. We viewers already saw during the intro of the film that the studios might be the hideout place of what's left of a severely dysfunctional family. The boys return home and get punished for their acts by their parents, but that's nothing compared to the horror that awaits them later that night… The mysterious figure followed them home and plans to silence them forever. Strangely enough, quite a lot of the violence occurs off-screen, but still the suggestive terror and intense atmosphere is almost unbearable. I will, for example, always remember a specific scene featuring a ringing mobile phone and an icky clown's mask…Now that is what I call real horror! Bustillo and Maury are even so talented that they manage to make the oldest and most clichéd sentence in horror cinema history – "There is something under my bed" – still as petrifying as never seen before! And, for the sick puppies amongst you, don't worry too much about my remark regarding off-screen violence, as there still is plentiful of gore and bloodshed featuring on-screen as well. The three young protagonists give away remarkably stellar performances and they receive excellent support from more experienced French actors and actresses like Francis Renaud, Anne Marivin and Béatrice Dalle. Personally, I still regard "À l'intérieur" as slightly superior – mainly because the nature and motivation of villain is more realistic in this film – but "Aux Yeux des Vivants" is nevertheless also a must-see horror movie for the true and most courageous fans of the genre!