The Living and the Dead

source: The Living and the Dead

That I can't believe I'm even giving it 2/10. If the goal was to make a movie that was dull, boring, tedious and depressing, it was achieved. Thank God its only 80 minutes. Anymore and I may have knifed myself..hahaha. If you have nothing better to do and need something to put you to sleep late at night, place this in the DVD player and nod off. The dream sequence is a highlight in creative stupidity. Whats that on the father's head but a crown of burning candles??...you have to be kidding me......BOO! What a waste of time...whomever wrote the "One of the best film's I've ever seen" on the cover was either paid by the director or has been living in a cave for the last 20 years.

I thought i might see this movie because a lot of people I know said it was good and I watched the first 30 minutes and i found it to be dull and depressing.I fell asleep in the 30 minutes of this.I had really bad insomnia last night and I thought this movie cured it.I was misleaded by the statement at the top of the rental DVD "the best movie I have ever seen" and I didn't buy it after watching it.I love horrors and this was definitely not one i particularly liked.It also failed to disturbed me and I cant believe people on here are giving it rave reviews.It is over-hyped.Do NOT watch this one.I was so disappointed with this movie. 1/10 is my rating

On the Cover of the rental DVD it said that is was one of the best movie some movie critic had ever seen. I have to say that I love movies that contain a certain depth and make you think and the quotes on the cover promised just that. I actually had to start this movie twice because I stopped it at the first try after 15 minutes not being able to concentrate on the "storyline"(there actually is not really much of a storyline to begin with).What I am trying to get across is that this is just not a movie that captures you in the first couple of minutes and also this is definitely not a horror movie. The horror is supposedly rooted in the fact that there are two very sick people (one mentally and one physically) that are locked in together and try to care for each other. The deranged or mentally ill son might be portrayed in a realistic fashion but that does not make it less annoying to watch his character rummage through this movie. What I found most annoying is the overuse of fast paced pictures combined with nasty techno music. I do get it that this is meant to emphasize his progressing madness but I would say that the audience would have understood this without using this stylistic device 5 times in a row. Another maddening element are certain jumps in the time line that make it even harder to follow the already chaotic "storyline" I found also utterly unrealistic that a concerned father would leave his terminally ill wive and his deranged son who, as he notes earlier is "not very good with strange people". Altogether a very unpleasant movie not only because of its content but because it is very hard to follow and even harder to connect to any of the characters portrayed in it!

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.

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.

I thought this movie was great, A lot of people commented on it falling short of the 'horror' genre, but I don't think it was ever meant to be one. Watch it as a tragic drama, and these disappointments fade. I think Leo Bill did a fantastic job and I felt drawn into his character even further by the camera's exceptional use as he moves about the house. I don't want to spoil anything, so suffice to say it was a well acted movie with great camera-work, an exceptional cast and the overlying doom which permeated throughout the movie drew me in sometimes - enough to identify with some the universal aspects of the story and at times feel a shudder through my back, more so than any 'horror' show I've seen in the last few years.

I've learned only one thing after seeing this movie, about taste you can't discuss. the DVD cover was full with compliments about this movie, but don't ask me why. I would have never published such a movie. The plot is boringly simple, there are only 3 characters, a mother who's ill, a father that has to leave the house for a while, and a son who according to the movie summary suffers from szicofrenia. everything happens in the family house. 2 things were the most terrible in this movie, the annoying way how someone who suffers szicofrenia is pictured here, mainly as a mentally retard who can't say any word of sense, and secondly the boring dialog that repeat over and over. the movie was all about the son, but he can only act as a mentally retarded guy, not as someone who suffers from szicofrenia. it's hard to believe that this movie got still so much of positive feedback...

I shouldn't even get this piece of waste of time one star. I'm sitting here considering this one of the worst movies i have ever seen - and i've seen some crap in my time. The sorry piece of movie will of course give us all some bad taste in our mouth when they make awkward and embarrassing scenes like seeing a retarded son trying to help his mother when she is seriously ill and crying, scenes where the retard tries to force his mother to eat pills because "the more you take, the better you will get". But that doesn't make the movie better, touching, scary or anything else than a bad taste in my mouth and wanting to seeing this sorry movie. So lets just say that the one star i'm giving is for making me feel bad. The effects are really annoying - fast forward style effects, annoying sound. Mental-patient seeing visions effect look like a joke with a painted guy with something weird on top of his head - i guess he is supposed to look dead (and even with this they fail miserably) and he has got something that looks like a new years party decoration on top his head. Even the ever so faulty and stupid story of the family with a sick son and mother has so many annoying mistakes and just poor judgments in it that i hate this movie. I would never recommend this movie to anyone, not even my worst enemy or as looser-practical-joke recommendation to my best friends... DO NOT WASTE YOUR LIFE ON THIS!

This is definitely a bad movie, especially taking into account the over-positive magazine quotes on the DVD cover: "The best movie I have ever seen.", must have been his first. The retard is a miscast of the worst possible case, he does not even come close to scary at any point in the movie. The plot is thin and the characters are not detailed. The retard should have been treated when he first struck but then the movie would have ended half an hour after it started. It does not make any sense. It would have made a nice last year school project, but should never have been released!!!