The Living and the Dead (2006)

Thanks for the memories!

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Absolutely Brilliant!

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Nothing like going into something blind and having it blow your socks off. This is some emotionally brutal stuff, the last film to kick me in guts like this was Session 9 (which this shares some DNA with, along with The Babadook, The Shining and, peculiarly, Withnail & I). Leo Bill's performance seemed a little too mannered at first, but I bought into it after a little while, from there on in it felt devastatingly authentic. Bleak as it undoubtedly is, director Simon Rumley balances tragedy and comedy so perfectly that it often blurs the line between the two, had he not nailed that balancing act so completely, I might not have got through the brisk 79 minute running time without wanting to go outside and lay down in the road. Really, really excellent stuff, going to have to give Rumley's follow up Red, White and Blue a look now.

I just finished watching two seasons of The Vicar of Dibley, and I thought I would see Roger Lloyd-Pack (Bartie Crouch in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) in something more serious.He is a country gentleman whose son (Leo Bill, Alice in Wonderland, Kinky Boots) is schizophrenic and whose wife (Kate Fahy) is dying. He has to leave home, so he hires a nurse (Sarah Ball) to watch both of them.The son locks out the nurse and cares for his mother. This proves to be extremely embarrassing to Mom. And, if two pills are prescribed, then taking a dozen or more will get you better quicker. Mom went from embarrassment to fear.The sinking into schizophrenia is disturbing and frenetic and may upset some viewers, but it is an emotion packed film that bears watching.

If you enjoy movies about retards running rampant and elder abuse than this is the movie for you! Some of the best scenes of a naked sick old woman being humiliated that I have ever seen in a movie. Also includes spastic idiot drug abuse and fecal covered sheets! I stopped watching when the retard started force feeding his sick mother pills to "make her better".Truly a horror to watch, and not in a good way. If this is your kind of thing, your time would be better spent watching an expose on abuse in nursing homes.This movie should not have been made.

Joe Hitchcock, that is. One reviewer said Rumley is no Werner Herzog or David Lynch. Hell, he's not even Werner Klemperer or Richard Lynch.In all fairness to "The Living and the Dead," the actors do a fine job in portraying their parts. However, the film suffers from numerous plot holes because it feels like Rumley has absolutely no knowledge of caring for a terminally ill or disabled person. If someone needs a wheelchair to get around or assistance to go to the toilet, you don't put the toilet chair or the wheelchair far from the person that needs them. And what in the hell was the telephone doing on the first floor? In "Sorry, Wrong Number," Barbara Stanwyck had the phone next to her bed, and that was during Hollywood's Golden Age. Had I been in Donald's shoes, I would have made sure the house was more accessible, made it so that there was a phone near my wife's bed and didn't leave for London until Nurse Mary was in the house. However, that's just me.Another problem with this film is that various camera tricks and scenes lead the viewer to think that there will be a twist ending. However, the only thing we are given is seemingly endless and irritating scenes of James running through the house at speeds similar to John Wesley Shipp in "The Flash" television series. At least there was a reason for Shipp running fast. There's no reason for James doing this. Perhaps Simon Rumley confused artistic with annoying and redundant."The Living and the Dead" tries to pass itself off as a film like "Memento" or "The Usual Suspects," but it comes off as something that disappoints the viewer in the end.