Living Among Us (2018) User Reviews

Too many plot holes

[the_doofy · 4/10 · 15 February 2018]

I found the acting to be good to real good, the plot was easy to grasp and gets your interest. I guess this means the direction was done well. The sound was excellent, (something I have come to appreciate in a movie). The interaction between the characters in the openingwere short but kind of believable for me.

Its got the expected gore and nudity, but my problem with this movie was the things that did not match up to the foundation. Under the circumstances the 'ceremony' would never have been made common knowledge. This one scene (ceremony) was the pivot for the movie, so its kind of a big deal, and just not believable due to how the head vamps are manifesting themselves.

And then the scenes that follow after the ceremony make that one scene nonsensical. So I guess they were too anxious to get the gore in at the cost of their well developed first 2/3 of the movie.

Something happens to the 'elder' and this severely affects some but conveniently not others, and how did the found footage make it to the media. large numbers of unnoticed missing people in small area. etc

They really needed a beta testing group, this could of been so much better than it turned out to be, they just did not take the time to make it right.

I really liked a lot of the movie, but the action scenes just kind of sent it to ludicrousness of the realm of unbelievability when a viewer even thinks about it for a littel bit.

A wasted opportunity

[JofiElias · 5/10 · 4 February 2018]

I enjoyed this movie, but. Let me explain: I have been captivated by the intelligent idea, the exquisite acting, the creepy atmosphere. The director was able to raise the tension to the limit, then ... at 2/3 of the movie it came an hasty ending: a totally unbelievable escape and some action (very silly action). Sometimes "the less the better": with a little more care on the script in the final part, I think Living Among Us would have been another milestone in the found-footage genre.

Confusing mess with some redeeming features.

[iamthehollow · 5/10 · 5 February 2018]

It's a frustrating watch this one, it has effective moments of horror which immediately separates this film from 80% of modern horror...but and this is a huge but...the WHOLE PREMISE IS LUDICROUS.

You'll have to watch it to find out just how risible it is, but rest assured, it's reaching like a dwarf in giant land...it seems like the whole premise was a bit of a reshoot...see what you think.

Some really nice acting in there, especially from the extremely well put together Esmé Bianco.

I do recommend it to horror fans.

Bad acting and dialogue

[imdb-4912 · 3/10 · 12 September 2020]

I only watched 15 minutes of this but that was enough. The acting was bad, but I don't blame the actors, the director lacked the experience to direct the actors. When the acting is this bad, when the dialogue is this convoluted... it's the director's job to say "CUT!" and then instruct the actors and do another take. I can't watch any more of this.

Not Good

[royeighmey · 2/10 · 14 March 2020]

I've had this movie on my que with Tubi tv for a while now, never got around to watching it till now. I don't understand how a horror fan can actually sit and watch this movie and like it. The last 15 minutes or so we're o.k. but certainly not enough to save it. If you're scrounging around and can't find anything to watch, I suppose you can do worse, but you can also do a lot better.

The entire movie rests on an idiotic premise.

[fedor8 · 4 September 2020]

There are several key flaws that suck the blood out of this so-so "comedy".

First of all, it's not funny, only slightly clever here and there. But there's very little that hasn't been done before in countless "different" vampire films.

Secondly, the reasons for the film-crew staying for so long after everything they'd witnessed is very far-fetched. Already after the "weird one" sneaked into their room they should have bolted.

Not to mention the absurd invitation to witness the sacrifice ritual. It made zero sense that the vampires would invite them to it, nor that the crew would opt to stay on filming after it.

Even after the killing of the stoners - they still stayed. Wut?

Even after they'd overheard the leaders conspiring to kill them, they still stayed.

Makes zero sense.

Thirdly, and this is the biggest logic flaw, just how stupid are the vampires to invite a major documentary crew, only to have them slaughtered. Duh. Obviously, their disappearance would be headline news which is precisely the opposite of what these "modern new vampire" campaigners wanted. The entire movie rests on this idiotic premise.

I found the early conversations with the vampires dumb, because they seemed to get so easily offended, like a bunch of over-sensitive SJWs. These vampires lived for centuries hence being offended should not be in their nature. Quite to the contrary. Just as it makes no sense for a 400-year vampire to be so dumb as to kill a major documentary film crew and not expect hefty consequences. A 400 year-old vampire should be far more savvy than the average modern human, not less.

How did the blonde get infected? When? No proper explanation given.

The film-crew actually bickering while trying to escape: totally unrealistic hence unfunny.

Nothing new or interesting here

[iluvpizza2 · 2/10 · 25 February 2019]

The premise was intriguing - along the lines of what Taika Waititi did with the infinitely superior What We Do in the Shadows - but the execution here was lackluster. The overall writing, dialogue and plot was terrible. The only saving grace is some of the acting.

Invigoratingly Entertaining

[nebk · 7/10 · 3 February 2018]

Living Among Us is a refreshingly entertaining horror fantasy with comedic undertones. It concerns a documentary camera crew sent in to interview a family of vampires living in suburban L.A. They are welcomed with open arms as long as they bring no crosses, holy water or stakes. The "family" are interviewed one by one and offer explanations for their vampiric nature claiming they are people with feelings just like anyone else and have been infected by a vampiric virus which makes it impossible for them to live in direct sunlight. They also claim that due to technology they don't need to kill humans but can survive on donated blood. Soon however things take a much darker and sinister turn and the documentarians find themselves fighting for their lives after witnessing the true nature of the vampires (Blood Sacrifices, Ancient Rituals, Hunting and Dismemberment of Humans etc).

The acting is good all around especially by William Sadler, Andrew Keegan, Esme Bianco and the late John Heard as the Vampires. The documentary crew played by Thomas Ian Nicholas, Jordan Hinson and Hunter Gomez all act decently as well as do the rest of the supporting actors. There are some tongue in cheek lines such as "I'm really excited to have you" "we have been dining with humans for years...and on them." and "you honestly thought we live there?" In regards to a derelict house next door and "we have been entertaining for centuries, we do know how to make you guys a meal." There are certain issues such as the shaky camera found footage, but in this case it does work. Also the vampires trying to convince humans they are harmless should have taken greater care in not exposing their true nature. Other than that Living Among Us is a very good film that i will probably watch again.

Predicatable and Insipid

[SHR-11102 · 2/10 · 13 March 2019]

Very poorly written, characters are uninteresting, and you can see the plot twists coming a mile away. John Heard is the only redeeming feature. Save your money and time. Watch something else.

Living Among Us (2018)

[SashaDarko · 7/10 · 19 February 2018]

This one would benefit from being filmed in a traditional way rather than being a found footage flick, believability is close to zero - cuts masked as "digital interference / glitches", super HD quality from the "hidden" cameras, not to mention very known Hollywood actors being here. TV scenes are done amateureshly in a way that you clearly see it's just someone on the green screen cut out with some additional lines in After Effects, it doesn't feel like real TV footage at all.

But everything else is actually great - the movie is engaging and interesting to watch and it's definitely not a dragging one, actors do a good job (William Salder and John Heard take the cake with their charisma), the visual effects are great. The ending is not on that level though - a lot of very stupid and convenient things happenning, like when some characters demonstrate sudden weakness and stupidity after showing ultrasuperpowers and showing capability to think ahead of your opponent (not to mention they should already know something about the things the crew has, can't go into details because it would be spoiler, but it should be a pretty obvious plot hole).

Interview with a Vampire Family

[JoeB131 · 3/10 · 31 August 2020]

Okay, this film is in the old "Found Footage" category, with my usual complaint about Found Footage films, that it's is improbable that anyone would keep filming when horrific death and violence is going on all around them. This is emphasized by the character with the camera constantly being yelled at to put down the camera.

That said, an investigative reporter discovers that vampires are real and they are getting food from blood banks. They are invited to visit a vampire family, who try to convince them despite the blood drinking and immortality, they are just as normal as you are.

Except, it quickly devolves into a chamber of horrors, with sacrifice rituals and general murder and mayhem. Our heroes are eventually picked off, but expose the vampires. Hooray, I guess.

Writing that out, I'm actually taking it down a couple stars. It has a good cast, but the leaps in logic just take me out of the movie.

Good, fun film with a few stumbles.

[paulgreen879 · 8/10 · 5 February 2018]

VERY solid cast. Loved James Russo, John Heard, William Sadler. Those old dogs made this movie and gave it weight! Great story until the third act which went into a typical all-action survival ride.

I loved the premise, I loved the story, I just wish the damn third act had been a little more cleaned up. That said, my friend loved the third act most of all. Maybe I'm just too old, who knows. I will say I didn't get bored.

Not a perfect film, but very entertaining and very watchable. Anyone watching this should agree this is much better than your average horror movie.

The life of vampires

[Flekoun · 6/10 · 23 February 2021]

So I have such embarrassed feelings about this movie. At the beginning, the film looked quite interesting, but with time, the film became more and more stupid. And when the end of the film was approaching, it started to get quite exciting and interesting, but even so, this film belongs to the weaker ones. On the other hand, I must say that despite many shortcomings, the film did not bore me.

Doesn't really hang together.

[S_Soma · 3/10 · 6 February 2018]

LIVING AMONG US opens with a small collection of news broadcasts announcing the "discovery" of a vampire "virus". Essentially, vampires are real and vampirism is caused by a virus and this virus has been around for quite some time. One news piece even quotes one "expert" claiming that the phenomenon was first reported as far back as 1811.

One particularly juicy (pun intended) element of the news stories is an exposé suggesting that many blood donation organizations have been supplying the erstwhile not-commonly-known vampires with blood. It is supposedly this vampiric use of blood donation facilities that really drags the existence of vampires fully into the limelight.

Apparently, one particular vampire "family", part of the local vampire "section", has come forward and offered to allow a news crew to come visit them in their home to interview them over the course of a few days. Of note is the fact that the particular news crew that is invited is headed up by the "documentarian" that discovered and broke the vampire/blood donation organization connection.

Disturbingly, however, the interview invitation comes with a few strings attached. Where most documentary crews consist of anywhere from 7 to 10 people, a maximum of 3 is all that will be allowed on this gig. Additionally, certain items are not permitted, to wit: holy water, crosses, rosary beads or wooden stakes. AND there are rules about where the crew can and can't go in the household and limitations on filming.

The documentary crew arrives at the home of the vampire family and it doesn't take long for things to go horribly wrong. Vampire oriented horror ensues.

This is a "found footage" style film, although it should be noted that it has a far more professional look and feel than your typical found footage junker. It even features at least two well-known and exceptionally well-established actors, William Sadler and John Heard. (More on this point later.) Production values are high and it's definitely a visually polished film. Unfortunately, this is where the list of positive elements comes to an end.

Bluntly, while the film has many superficial plot elements for being a failure, at its most basic level the film fails because of its fundamentally unworkable concept. On the face of it, the idea of the story seems intriguing: having been thoroughly outed, some vampires seek to put a positive PR spin on things by volunteering to create a documentary that shows them to be just regular folk. Just regular folk that have a virus that makes them vampires that need to drink human blood. Why, it's really a story about a tragic kind of disability, right? And we all know how we should be understanding of people with disabilities, right?

But, realistically, how is this movie idea ever going to pan out? If the vampires are successful with their scheme, then nothing happens that's horrific and the movie is uninteresting. If it DOESN'T pan out, as it doesn't, the vampires, some of whom are supposedly hundreds of years old and are quite good at blending in with humanity without being noticed, simply come off as looking like idiots or the monsters they are.

So the movie suffers from bumps and warts that just stick out all over the place.

Some examples....

After giving a list of the above-mentioned forbidden items, in a subsequent interview about such items, the family head vampire claims that no, that's just superstition, they don't really react to crosses or holy water. The next natural question is to wonder why those things were then forbidden to be brought, and that question never happens.

During the course of the movie we encounter a rather large pile of previously vampire-noshed people. Somehow this hasn't attracted local attention? Scores of local people disappearing doesn't attract attention but a subtle connection between blood banks and vampires DOES?

Supposedly, the family of vampires is trying to keep a low and normal profile for the documentary for obvious reasons. But the juvenile delinquent family member, Blake, takes the opportunity to engage in extreme vampire behavior at every opportunity. You know, ripping random people's heads off, tearing innocent people limb from limb and drinking their blood, and so on. You know... so that such interesting things can be filmed for the documentary. Huh?

One of the other vampire family members, Selvin, is clearly mentally deranged right from the onset. And yet the vampire family leaders don't do anything to conceal him.

The entire family participates in a "ritual" for the edification of the documentary crew in which a living and shackled woman is cut up and fed upon on the dining room table while she screams bloody murder. The vampire family leadership attempts to pass this off as a "public service" because the victim supposedly is a prostitute who has AIDS who is knowingly infecting other people so she can get money for her drug habit. Right. THAT'S going to be a PR hit.

Remember, the whole idea of granting this interview was putting together the documentary to put a positive spin on the existence of vampires, your friendly neighbors and upstanding citizens. And yet virtually nothing that happens from the moment the film crew arrives is ever going to put the vampires in any sort of positive light. The whole idea for the movie is simply ridiculous. It couldn't, and doesn't, work as a storyline.

On an anecdotal and somewhat sad closing note, John Heard plays a major role in this movie. While you might not know him by name off the top your head, as soon as you see him you recognize him as a namebrand actor; after all, you have been seeing him on screen in innumerable movies and on TV for a bit more than 4 decades. LIVING AMONG US, based upon its IMDB listing, is either the last or one of the last movies he made. Considering the dubious quality of the movie, this is rather unfortunate. It is unclear to me why he would even make such a movie. Did he have the worst agent in the industry?

There is a quote from Heard in which he refers to himself as having been an "arrogant jerk", that he had become "a hack actor" and that he had "dropped the ball". Clearly he was unhappy with how his career had eventually panned out, though he in fact had played in many major and respected, successful movies in his career. Having LIVING AMONG US as his final or near-to-final work feels almost as if fate conspired to put a emphatically depressing punctuation on his own theme of disappointed self-assessment.

Great Premise... Ok implementation

[jpq-89332 · 5/10 · 19 March 2018]

So no spoilers here. The films cinematography was really great. Found footage films are kind of despised now but this one wasn't bad in terms of camera shakiness and the overall camera work.

The actors were good. The script was not. I could see the actors trying to do the best they could with what they were giving. Certain characters like Blake and Andrew, were good in bringing creepiness to their respective parts. Then other characters like Mike and Benny, while good were not very good protagonists and I actually caught myself wanting the vampires to come out on top by the end of the film.

***************************Spoiler******************** What happened to Carrie???

Wooden and full of plot holes

[milyrouge · 4/10 · 4 May 2019]

It's nothing new as a concept, but it could have been fun. Unfortunately, the acting was wooden and uninspired during pretty much all of the film. In addition, there were so many moments where we thought people in that situation would have acted completely differently that it became a bit wearing.

The last third of the film was a bit of a slog and we watched it mainly just to see how it ends. The last five minutes were a little better, making it a little less painful.

If there's nothing else on and you have a source of good drinks, watch it. Not recommended sober!

Yes, the camera is off.

[nogodnomasters · 3/10 · 9 February 2018]

A crew of three film a household of vampires to show how "normal" they are and that they should not be feared. Not all vampires agree.

This is a hand held camera film with some name brand vampires, but an irritating film crew. If I was ever in a found footage type of film and then die before it is completed, please do not dedicate it to me. Just saying. The film had better actors than most in the genre, but unfortunately suffers from script anemia.

I was just thankful we didn't have to put up with the green cam or the ground cam.

Guide: F-word, nudity

So its a rip off of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS?

[steffybeth · 9 August 2018]

Was going to watch it but just read the synopsis and it basically sounds like they've ripped off the very brilliant WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS, so its a no from me.

Entertaining Found Footage Horror

[Armin_Nikkhah_Shirazi · 7/10 · 9 June 2023]

LIVING AMONG US shows a documentary film crew which has been invited to interview a vampire family in their home during a time in which vampirism has been reframed as a medical condition, albeit one with a heavy burden of stigma. The purpose of the interviews is to show that vampires have been "domesticated" and are no longer a danger to humans, thanks to voluntary blood donations, but things don't go as planned.

There are two main criticisms that can be leveled against this movie:

First, it does bear some thematic similarity to WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (2014), another found footage vampire movie. I tend to be forgiving of this because to me, this similarity stands out largely because of how good SHADOWS is and how few vampire found footage movies there are (in fact, the only other one I can think of is THE MONSTER PROJECT (2017)). There are countless found footage movies featuring ghosts, demons, aliens and Bigfoot, so I am willing to cut the movie some slack on this one.

Second, the movie does have some flaws in the plot. I can rationalize the vampires letting the crew witness their ceremony because they wanted to gauge human reactions, but if they really never intended to let the crew go, how did they plan on dealing with the fallout of a disappearing crew? The female crew member's wounds and how the public did not seem to notice so many disappearances are left unexplained but could have been easily addressed in the plot. Also, there is an apparent vampire love triangle plus incestuous relationship which go nowhere.

While I am not as forgiving of these issues, I must admit that I found the movie nonetheless entertaining from beginning to end. Unlike most found footage movies, this one had good production values, the acting and cinematography was good and I enjoyed the black humor. So, overall I think this is still a good movie, definitely one of the better found footage movies.

Really poor acting from otherwise decent actors.

[thorsword · 3/10 · 5 October 2021]

Man.... I don't get the accolades. The acting from Thomas Ian Nicholas and Andrew Keegan was painful. Really painful... I've loved these guys in so many other movies.

It's sad that this was John Heard's last movie. However, the movie had some good points, the concept was interesting and it wasn't unwatchable. I think a remake or reboot could work.

Not perfect, but liked it more than I expected to.

[alexlgarzon · 7/10 · 22 November 2022]

I stumbled across this flick on Amazon Prime Video, and it wasn't terrible - it's actually a pretty fun entry in the found footage genre. Very briefly, it's about a news crew sent to interview a self-proclaimed "vampire family" who want the world to know that vampires are real, that their "ailment" is effectively a medical condition, that while they do drink blood, they have it sent to them via various blood banks versus obtaining it by hunting humans, and that they wish for the world to understand them and see things through their eyes. Said news crew head to the vampires' abode for a series of interviews with the family, and when the truth about the "family" starts presenting itself, shenanigans ensue.

It's definitely a flawed film - there are a lot of little inconsistencies all over the place (some of the explanations and happenings in the film feel either forced or very nonsensical, the dialogue between the characters feels sloppy at points, and these elements combined make the film feel rather uneven overall), but the premise alone makes the film worth the watch, most of the performances are very good, and the horror elements, along with the growing dread the hapless crew has to endure amidst the growing chaos keeps a decent tension going up to the end.

Overall, I did enjoy it. Definitely not a great film, but a pretty decent slice of horror.

Dead On Arrival

[scythertitus · 5/10 · 24 July 2018]

The majority of stars for this movie go to the stars themselves, since the fine cast try to do a great job with a good premise that is then butchered by the film maker.

So much of the plot doesn't make sense and the locations and effects are not used to the best of their ability either. Other films have tackled the same ideas and done a much better job at staging, shooting and subtly letting a story unravel. Whereas here everything is laid out far too quickly and then sloppily followed along as if we the audience didn't see it coming from the get-go. Worst of all as a found footage movie it falls into all the pitfalls that the genre is criticised for. The amount of time that people mention turning a camera off or how they have to keep filming is maddening, not to mention the cheat static that is used far too often and far too blatantly.

Overall this whole film comes across as amateur outside of the cast involved. So many other movies have done so much more with so much less, e.g. American Zombie, and they did it over a decade ago. Maybe if you are a casual horror fan you will find something here, otherwise I would not recommend this unless you are a fan of the actors involved.

Very entertaining film

[tsmith3452 · 9/10 · 5 February 2018]

Not perfect 100% but a good 90%. It was better than the average found footage film. After reading all the reviews about it, I decided to get this film on VOD. I noticed one major thing - all the horror reviewers seemed to like it and the ones that don't specialize in horror hated it. So me being not just a horror lover but a film lover decided it was worth the try. Okay, the trailer got me interested because I love the Crystal Castles song used. I came to some interesting conclusions.

No, this was not another What We Do In the Shadows. I did also see that this was shot before that film ever came out to all the people who keep saying this film copied it. I did my own research and you can see a DOZEN press releases dating back to 2013. That's 2 years before WWDITS ever came out!! But if this had been a ghost found footage film, nobody would be saying crap because every other found footage is about a ghost. The two films were nothing alike in any way, shape or manner. They don't have vampire teeth, the premise is nothing alike between the two. And this uses more traditional filmmaking techniques.

I really loved William Sadler's performance as the Vampire lead. He was so perfect in this with a very diabolical side to him but also so politically correct. Writer/director/producer Brian Metcaf took a tired genre and gave it some new blood, so to speak. You can tell he knows film. It almost has an oldschool sensibility to it with a modern spin. Why didn't I give this a perfect 10? I thought some of the acting was a little off. I thought the cuts got annoying a little at times but now I'm just getting picky. I don't think it will be everyone's cup of tea but definitely the horror fans will love it. My girlfriend loved it and she doesn't even like horror. Well that's probably her old school crush Andrew Keegan was in it as an overly obnoxious vampire.

My score:

Acting - 9 Directing - 9 Writing - 9 Entertainment - 10 Premise - 10 Originality - 10 Visuals - 10

Terrible camera work!

[dottiejmarsh · 1/10 · 31 July 2022]

Poor story line terrible camera work. Can't believe I sat through this b rated movie.

Seriously would have been better if they didn't so the whole move as first party filming.

It's so-so but don't expect too much.

[RoboRabbit89 · 3/10 · 1 October 2021]

Living Among Us is one of those films, with an interesting concept but a somewhat poor to execution.

John Heard, William Sadler and the other cast members did a good job playing vampires but the script itself, I don't know, it felt like something else was missing, but I guess you can't expect much with found footage films.

I've seen a few of these found footage films, personally I'm not a huge fan of them but I can watch them.

I think a the tone, atmosphere, lighting, style were all fine, and again the cast did a good job but still something was missing. Anyway the ending I felt was okay, but that may rub some people the wrong way but I still felt it was satisfying.

Overall I give it a 3/10. It's not the best film I've seen, and depending on your mood, it's one of those films you can see every now and then. If you're curious give it a look, but don't expect too much.