Chloé Coulloud plays trainee care worker Lucie Klavel, whose first day on the job sees her visit the crumbling country home of elderly coma patient Mrs. Jessel. On learning from her boss that Jessel, a once successful ballet teacher, is rumoured to have a vast fortune hidden somewhere in her house, Lucie, her boyfriend, and his brother break into the old building to search for the treasure, but uncover a terrifying secret instead.
I absolutely loved French directing duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury's brilliantly inventive and very bloody debut Inside, which only makes it all the more disappointing that their second film, Livid, is such a complete and utter mess, a hodge-podge of half-baked ideas wrapped in a stale 'freaky fairytale' aesthetic that makes not a lick of sense.
A gang of thieves breaking into a building only to discover something terrible lurking inside is hardly the most original of ideas, and Livid's surreal, oneiric style, which includes the use of such trite horror clichés as bizarre toys, broken dolls, creepy children, and stuffed animals, only adds to the sense of deja vu. The ironic thing is, when the directors do steer their film into more original waters, matters only get worse, the pair delivering plenty of surreal spookiness and some decent gore but failing to give a rational explanation for any of the madness they depict.
Vampiric creatures; a 'broken' ballerina given a clockwork spine; soul transference via moth; ethereal will-o-the-wisp flames; a flying house: undeniably very bizarre, but what the hell it's all about is anyone's guess. Bustillo and Maury sure aren't telling...
3.5 out of 10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.
