The Living and the Dead

This is possibly the worst film i have ever seen. I actually saw the premiere in Rotterdam Film Festival, and whilst many people walked out I stayed to the bitter end. But that was mainly because I didn't want to lose my friends. Self indulgent is a word often overused in the arts, and some of the best music and film is incredibly self indulgent, but behind that indulgence there is often genius. Unfortunately here there is nothing, not even a plot. The mistake the director Simon Rumley makes is to dwell on the suffering of the characters, all in a kind of 'gross out' adolescent way, without any insight, or any freshness. All the best films now tend not to be so mawkish, making The Living and The Dead seem like a bad student project from the 1970s. There's no lightness of touch here and no humour. Perhaps we're supposed to laugh at mentalist James in the same way we laugh at Julian Donkey Boy. But he's just not that funny and he has none of the demented hilarity of Donkey Boy. Like the rest of the cast, he's just a stereotype, an extremely annoying stereotype. All you'll learn from The Living and The Dead is that some people clearly have much more money than sense. And I'm not talking about any of the characters in the film here.

'The Living and the Dead' portrays the lives of a British noble, his wife and their adult son set in a spectacular country estate. The good days are long past. The estate is in disrepair and at risk of forfeiture, the wife bedridden most of the film and the son clinically psychotic. That sums up the bulk of what can be said with relative certainty about the plot.

The rest is a tumbling mash of conflicting alternate realities, displaced time-lines, hallucinatory visions and fast motion. Director/writer/producer Simon Rumley loves the fast motion. Leo Bill as the son spends much of the film at ten-fold speed, racing through vast expanses of interior, arms and face animated in a failed attempt to impart the viewer his perspective. It doesn't work, quickly growing tiresome and obvious. Rumley's so committed to the technique that clouds, the advancing sun, branches, vehicles, doctors and nurses eventually join the fray. Repeatedly. It's difficult to comprehend why since it has no bearing on the quiet desperation Rumley's grasping at, instead evoking the feel of an Eighties music video or a VW commercial.

It's symptomatic of the film's jettisoning coherency for atmosphere. The first half contradicts the back with no hint of resolution offered. The son proves more criminally insane than clinically yet no reason offered why he wasn't institutionalized. Early in the film when still portrayed as a happy idiot the father is constantly abusive and stern. Fatherly warmth doesn't appear until unconscionable acts are committed. The son roams free past the point any modern Western nation would have seen him incarcerated. We never know why. Likewise the rest of the plot is so artificial and bent to the requirements of intense moments all believability is lost and with it any concern for the characters. The one bright spot is Kate Fahy's terrific portrayal of the wife. She creates the few and fleeting scenes in which the film works as intended. Not content with these minor successes Rumley brushes them aside to make room for more mind-bending plot twists, snatching total failure from the jaws of mediocre success. A movie for the patient only.

I think it would be fair to say The Living and the Dead had me held in some sort of blind terror for more often than not. The film is so outrageous in the places it goes and the manner in which it acts when it gets there, that it's impossible to merely put aside the watching experience having seen it. The film is a freak-show, yes, of characters; visual tricks and constructed scares, but a calculated and carefully constructed one: one that I think will tap into a nerve within, whether you're a veteran of many-a horror films or not. The film is something like a little under an hour and half long, but when it had ended, felt as if it had clocked in at something like three hours; such is the grip of terror and unease I was in. Like a hypnosis session in which you're out for the count for all of about thirty minutes, but the deep-rooted places you may have been to during that time unearthing such discomfort and a sense of feeling, that the whole process feels like half a day's gone by.

The film's premise sees it set up a perilous exchange between a middle aged mother and her twenty-something son in a large, pre-modern and isolated house in the country. She's physically unwell, suffering from some sort of extreme form of M.E. whilst he's a scatty, eccentric schizophrenic whose mannerism; movements and vocal tone is wildly inconsistent and unnerving. The mother is Nancy (Fahy), the son is James (Bill) and the family name is Brocklebank; something that I think instills a certain amount of pride into the household as father and husband of the piece Donald (Lloyd-Pack) seems to furiously defend them and their right to house there by way of a number of conversations over the phone with someone. It's this someone Donald must leave the property to venture out and see, and it's from here that most of the trouble unfolds.

The film's tone is unbearably downbeat, beginning in the present tense with a greyed out Donald covered in injuries as he observes an ambulance advance down his property's long, lonely driveway towards him. His face is glum, rueful and regretful and a perfect teeing up for the events the film covers in instilling a sense that something's up: he's thinking that leaving that final time was a big mistake. In flashing back to better times, certainly the best times either of these characters find themselves in throughout the film, it's revealed Donald cared for both his wife and son accordingly; with the early exchanges coming across as calm and methodical in their feeling and construction what with static camera work and long takes. This is in stark contrast to when James takes over as the self proclaimed "man of the house", a title actor Leo Bill does well in his character's mixture of pleading and exclaiming, in what is a desperate attempt to try and prove to his parents that he's able to take on responsibility. The danger signs in this lie within the fact his strict medication diet of various pills and vaccine shots sit uneasily with the fact he's commanded by his father to hide from visitors and avoid the newspaper, instilling a certain child-like sensibility to him and acting as triggers to stoke a fire of warning.

Leo Bill plays James as a sort of pastiche of Rik Mayall's character from popular 1990's British TV show 'Bottom', only rendered schizophrenic and far more mentally ill. Early on, I wondered if the man had an agenda; whether or not he was at all homicidal and indeed hated his mother which added to an intense element of unease. As the film switches perspectives in carer, a gradual shift in emphasis onto James becomes apparent in the conventions writer/director Simon Rumley applies. In switching from a mainly static camera complete with long takes which took prior precedence, Rumley then throws sped-up footage; bizarre angles; editing as well as distorted sound effects which amalgamate to form odd music into the mix, getting across a sense of chaos and somebody seriously ill-suited for the task. Rumley's tactics of applying a disorientating and off the wall aesthetic to most of the scenes James' acts as carer beautifully but disturbingly conflicts in a highly effective manner with this large, decrepit, centuries old manor house with which you do not associate the given conventions.

There are killings in the film; somebody gets knifed and there's a fair degree of blood running on a premise that sees it bed down in one place as terror and uncanniness plays out, but don't let that lead you to think this is a Halloween sequel or some similarly underwhelming slasher film. One sequence which goes a long way in highlighting this odd combination of techniques and conventions to actually form something half-decent occurs nearer the end when, isolated and on their own, a young female supporting character creeps through the dark passages and corridors of the home unaware of what lurks around them but knowledgeable that there's a male lead, somewhere, who could very well react negatively if he sees or finds her. The whole thing is constructed like an age-old sequence in a slasher-sub genre flick, but the film sets a bar far higher. Roger Lloyd-Pack does a superb job, banishing any lingering memory you might have of him in a prior comedic role as we observe his envisaging of what might very well have gone on during his absence. Rumley's film is not all about shocks and scares; a sequence later on in which many family members have gathered in the house's main area is shot from high on up in the rafters, the camera just too embarrassed or ashamed to go to ground level and capture these people's expressions and reactions. I found The Living and the Dead to be a smart and affecting film.

I just finished watching two seasons of The Vicar of Dibley, and I thought I would see Roger Lloyd-Pack (Bartie Crouch in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) in something more serious.

He is a country gentleman whose son (Leo Bill, Alice in Wonderland, Kinky Boots) is schizophrenic and whose wife (Kate Fahy) is dying. He has to leave home, so he hires a nurse (Sarah Ball) to watch both of them.

The son locks out the nurse and cares for his mother. This proves to be extremely embarrassing to Mom. And, if two pills are prescribed, then taking a dozen or more will get you better quicker. Mom went from embarrassment to fear.

The sinking into schizophrenia is disturbing and frenetic and may upset some viewers, but it is an emotion packed film that bears watching.

I found this film particularly painful to watch for entirely personal reasons.

First, I am an ex-psych nurse. I am currently a Social Care Worker dealing with some of the worst cases around. I am also mentally ill, though not critically so. As such this film touched home on just about every level.

This film is black and raw and real. The acting, especially of the son, is utterly superb very much akin to cases I have dealt with, which made the rapid descent all the more believable. I sat for a majority of the film thinking of just how easily this could really happen - and likely has happened many, many times.

There is an interesting quirk of time-line throughout, which highlights the reaction of the father to the actions of the son, which at its best involves a dual view of the stairwell. I felt this was something of a pivotal point and quite superb direction. The differing states of the building itself likewise reflect the state of the mother, which is again subtle but effective.

Do not expect a standard horror here. It isn't. It feels more like a snapshot of real lives and as such is vastly more effective than any straight horror flick could ever hope to be.

I would urge anyone with even a passing interest in mental health to watch this film. Consider it a warning of how easily the system can fail, and consider yourself forewarned.

That is all.