The greatest writers and filmmakers in the horror genre have one thing in common with their peers in other genres: they know that if you do nothing else, you have to tell a compelling story, with characters you can care about, whether you love them or hate them. If the story being told isn't worth crap, and you could hardly give a damn about the characters either way, then you're wasting your time and that of your audience. And sometimes, the best way to tell a horrifying, heartbreaking story is to keep it simple and keep it real.
Though uncovering its many layers takes you in a downward spiral of disillusion, madness and death, Simon Rumley's THE LIVING AND THE DEAD pares down a horror tale to its very essence, like the best of Stephen King or Poe's deepest, darkest imaginings. But what makes this film all the more tragic and terrifying is that there's not a vampire, werewolf or banshee in sight. It's simply the story of a family experiencing an increasing series of emotional nuclear implosions that eventually destroys everything in its wake, leaving one survivor shattered, shaken and stripped of everything, especially his sanity.
The entire story virtually never leaves its initial setting: Longleigh, a crumbling mansion located in an almost completely isolated part of the English countryside. The former Lord Donald Brocklebank (Roger Lloyd Pack) and his family have obviously fallen on hard times, with Donald and his wife Nancy (Kate Fahy) serving as the caretakers to severely mentally handicapped son James (Leo Bill), who is clinically a paranoid schizophrenic with severe depression, amongst other things. Under pressure to somehow resolve the family's dire financial straits, James's parents are hard-pressed to maintain the full-time job of taking care of him, and therefore have to rely on him to look after himself and his own medications a surefire recipe for disaster. When Donald has to travel to London to settle financial affairs, he has to leave James and Nancy to fend for themselves
and that's where the story takes its most harrowing turns.
You're never quite sure where you are, as Rumley, mixing the most nightmarish and disturbing aspects of King's MISERY, Polanski's REPULSION and even just a bit of the surrealism of David Lynch, (with references to the scarier sequences from Aronofsky's REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and Peter Greenaway's films), keeps the audience completely off-balance.
We're left to try and decipher what version of the story we're watching: is it the hellish events that take place completely from James' psychotic point-of-view as he tries to "take care" of Nancy, whom he sees as violently ill and dying, and wants to prove his worth as the "man of the house", by making her well while his father's away? Or the 'other' version, where he has such free access to his medications that he alternates between over-and-under-medicating himself to the point of a psychotic break, which leads him to murderous acts he would've never considered otherwise? The only thing that is crystal clear by the end is that it doesn't matter which version of reality we've been witnessing really happened. The result is still a family tragedy, and it eventually leaves Donald, lost and broken, to suffer the saddest fate of all.
Health care is a major issue that is universal, not just a grave concern here in the U.S., and writer/director Rumley has found a most novel way to present the concerns we all have in a manner that will hopefully disturb everyone enough to begin an extensive discourse about it. We're all worried about our future when it comes to our health, as well as our loved ones. Who will take care of our parents when they can no longer look after themselves? For that matter, who will look after us? What if there isn't anyone, or worst still, what if the only person we can rely on is probably the least capable of doing the job? But beyond the bracingly difficult subject matter are three tremendous performances. I seriously doubt that there are many American actors who would commit to their roles on the level that the cast has here. Kate Fahy gives an unbelievably brave performance as the "sickly" Nancy, with scenes that call for the kind of personal humiliation, violation and torture we can only hope we never come to experience. And Leo Bill might give the most nerve-wracking, wrenchingly accurate performance of a man falling over the edge into true madness as you're likely to see anywhere, in any horror movie or drama to date. Watching him, you can't help but wonder how and why he came to the state of affairs he's in by the time we first meet him, and what (if anything) we could do for him that would be better than his stressed-out parents can provide.
And though James' deteriorating state is at the heart of the film, it's Pack's performance I identified with most, whether Rumley intended it or not. When Pack's Donald is absent, we see and feel the devastating affect it has on both his wife and son, and when he's there, we can't help but feel for him. Here is a man in his twilight years, whose dreams for a life of peaceful retirement have been forever destroyed by God-only-knows what circumstances, and now to make matters worse, finds himself in a situation where whatever he does for the good of his disintegrating family is not enough to save them from a cruel fate, so that the only peace he can find at last is in the same place where his son knew nothing but the torment of the damned.
THE LIVING AND THE DEAD makes a very strong statement, and it's not for everybody. So, consider yourself forewarned, and be prepared for a thoughtful and somber evening afterward.
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