Aux yeux des vivants

After watching Bustillo n Maury's Inside n Livid, i was very impatient to watch their Among the Living.

This movie was on my radar for a very long time. Finally saw this recently.

The early sequences are brightly shot and filled with some beautiful cinematography. The greenery, the lake, meadows, barn n the abandoned studio r all captured very well.

Another best part is the character development in the first half.

The movie works effectively because of its pacing and build up of suspense and frights.

I found the last 20 mins unpredictable n very tension filled.

The film is about kids at peril which is heavy for me but kudos to the makers for not showing any harm towards the kids.

I can't stand violence towards kids.

But thankfully most of the kills are offscreen, especially related to kids.

I disliked the scene where the father beats up his son.

The scene where the freak is on the top of a car staring the kid is downright creepy.

Another creepy scene is the time when the kid says that he doesn't have a clown.

Few flaws: How was the freak able to locate the addresses of all the three kids.

The pamphlet of the missing pet wud have got just one address.

Why no hunt for the main culprit?

Viewers may find shades of Hills Have Eyes, Stand By Me, Halloween, TCM, etc.

2007's "Inside" was a taut, powerful horror/thriller , which tested the audience's endurance level for violence and shocks, particularly toward the usually out-of-bounds target of pregnant women.

Nothing in that movie would have made you anticipate that the filmmakers would follow it up with something as uninspired as this.

It's also surprisingly light on the violence, with nothing to really shock or surprise you.

The story is actually pretty simple, but is told in a confusing way, robbing it of all tension. It's something about three kids who skip school and stumble onto an abandoned movie set where they see someone disposing of a body. No one will believe them, of course, so they go home and find themselves under attack.

None of this elevated my pulse-rate. It certainly felt like it was supposed to, but the movie was too confusing and uninvolving to ever connect with me.

I said it was surprisingly light on violence and shock tactics. It's depressing that about the only such tactic this movie pulls out will not be shocking at all to anyone who has seen "Inside": a pregnant Beatrice Dalle (you guessed it) getting stabbed in the stomach.

It's the kind of movie that makes the previous movie by the same filmmakers seem like a fluke, like all the ideas they really have were covered completely in the first one.

I also think they had no idea how to handle a bigger budget; the cheaper cost of the first one kept things taut and effective and claustrophobic. Now, there's too many locations, too many characters, too little interest.

You know how, in slasher movies, people get knifed/cut down/etc and then get up and carry on fighting? Well, to get it out of the way, it's not really a spoiler to say there's a fair bit of that during the second half of 'Among the Living.'

That is the nearest I can come to any kind of criticism concerning a film that, from the pre-credits sequence until the final line, is terrific. Compelling. Weird. And violent! Three of the main players are 14 years of age, and their tender years gave me the feeling that things wouldn't get too grim. Happily I was wrong. Victor (Theo Fernandez), Tom (Zacharie Chasseriaud) and 'nerdy' Dan (Damien Ferdel) are three scamps skiving school. They visit an abandoned film lot - an excellent location for horror, and one I'm surprised isn't featured more often. They are enjoyable company and very well played. They witness frightening brutality from Klarence (Fabien Jegoudez), who is a truly frightening individual.

No-one gets through this film without receiving some sort of bloody graphic punishment, and the audience is given no clue as to who will survive and who won't. I had a great time with this subtitled French film and recommend it fully. My score is 8 out of 10.

The plot is that three young boys bunk off school on the last day of term and get up to some very anti social behaviour to while away the time. Then they happen upon a disused film lot/studio. What they do not know is that they have discovered the lair of two refuges from the real world and this 'family' do not welcome visitors, unless of course they have abducted them.

What follows is a fairly good watch. There are a few moments where the kids do the stupid thing, but then it gets into a thriller stride and becomes a better calibre of film. Also if you get miffed over bad police procedures being portrayed in film then this will wind you up no end. If Le Gendarmerie really behaved like this then they would all soon be looking for low rung security jobs.

This is not a splatter gore fest though there is some blood letting and the main 'evil person' is not really 'creature feature' scary either. Where it does score fairly well is in the suspense and the acting. All three kids do a really good job. So it does have flaws but if you ust sit back for the trip then this is a fairly passable effort. Original title was 'Aux yeux des vivants' and it is in French with sub titles.

You have to be given the chance of believing in a film to enjoy it. The film starts brutally and unexpectedly and the appearance of a Goonies-style gang of boys promises fun and adventures mixed up with horror. However all your hopes quickly dissolve into nothing when the characters begin to behave in, to put it simply, stupid ways. The feeling that I got as a spectator was that the directors thought of scenes they wanted to shoot and then forced the characters to do things to make them happen and move on to the next one. To me, that sort of decision can kill a movie. I'm all up for suspension of disbelief, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Among the Living soon becomes some sort of cross between Friday 13th and Goonies, but it doesn't quite work. Shame - I loved "Inside", I've been reading these French guys' magazine "Mad Movies" since I was 15 and I REALLY wanted to like this film... but I couldn't.