farmbwelts Review of The Living and the Dead

The Living and the Dead (2006)

Just to outweigh the positive comments...!

[1/10 · 9 September 2009]

I don't really have anything new to say about this film.... all the other negative reviews say the same as I thought during watching it; I just felt it has far too many positive reviews, and that just isn't right. I really can't remember the last time I saw such an infuriatingly stupid, bad film. The only reason I came across this film was because it was likened to "haunting in Connecticut" (which I found to be a relatively entertaining no-brainer)here on IMDb! I am in no rush to check out any of the director's other masterpieces. This was SO unrealistic. If it would have gone for a magic realism approach from a director like Julio Madem or Kim Ki Duk, or a surreal approach from someone like David Lynch, then maybe, just maybe it could have got away with the unacceptable events taking place in this film. I mean, come on. Setting up theatre IN THE HOUSE (!), performing some serious kind of operation there(there would be some serious scarring and everything), and then just putting her back to bed and leaving? Apparently she was all better though. And leaving the schizophrenic son to hide out in his room, after nearly poisoning his mother to death... no one, not even his father, seem to check up on him, or even know exactly where he had got to. Then both incidents involving the knife... Jesus! As already mentioned, Julian Donkeyboy, Memento and The Machinist have all dealt with mental illness, disorientation and guilt in much better ways. They should not even be a comparison. And then there was the film making itself. The terrible house music, speeding up of cameras (to depict the characters "crazy" outlook on things), the dream sequences ("scared scarred"!),and dialogue from earlier in the film overlapping inside someone's head with extra reverb all just stank of mid-nineties college movie to me. The whole thing left me seething. Hence the review. I never normally write them, I tend to hate critics cause they don't usually get where the creator is coming from, and they don't create themselves, they just complain about how they could never do it better themselves. I am certainly no film maker, but I think even I could have done a better job of this one, which would include re plotting, re writing, re scripting, and re shooting. And being a musician I'd redo all the music. The score was actually OK though (just not the boom boom stuff), and the acting was all fine, sometimes quite impressive. I was pleased to see Trigger from only fools and horses pop up. But had this film contained Johnny Depp, Robert Deniro and Mickey Rourke (as the mother), it would have played no better than it would with Keanu Reeves, George Bush and Gerry Halliwell under this director and writer. Sorry mate. Try harder.