Aux yeux des vivants

After a gruesome prologue, featuring the glorious Beatrice Dalle, AMONG THE LIVING begins.

Three teenage friends skip school for a day of adventure, only to have their fun interrupted by a horrific event.

With nods to movies as diverse as STAND BY ME, HALLOWEEN, and JEEPERS CREEPERS, Directors Bustillo and Maury put their trademark, brutal spin on the "coming of age" / slasher horror film. Most of the gore and brutality are found at the beginning and end of the film, sandwiching in a decent story about the kids and the hell they inadvertently bring upon themselves and their loved ones.

While not as jarring as some of the Directors' other work, there is enough menace and oddness to make it a worthwhile watch...

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.

First of all I would like to say that I really love the work of Bustillo and Maury, they are really nice guys and really talented. Let's start with what is wrong and then with the good part :) I was really really disappointed with the rhythm of the movie... Seriously there must have been a huge problem during the writing of the script because there are many moments that are out of tempo, with the actors waiting in front of an immobile camera... It's almost unbearable. I think there has been a problem of preparation and nobody knew what to shoot on set. But there are many good points: the music, the photography, the acting (for a French movie it's exceptional), the "boogeyman". I am still looking forward new movies from these guys, but I hope these problems will be solved for the next one :)

I mostly enjoyed this. The film taken as a whole seems pretty slight, not just in terms of plot (which is standard for the directors) but also in effect. The film is creepy and nasty. There's a horrifying "monster" in this played with great physicality by Fabien Jegoudez. There are scenes of absolute intensity, with beautiful haunting mise en scene.

Yet the whole thing feels a bit undercooked. What starts as a dark side of the Spielbergian kids on a mission story turns into a home invasion thriller and then into something else. It's not enough of any but it's fun watching it try. There seems to be a sociological context to it all that was a bit lost on me. Maybe it's a French thing - this worry about toxic gases from the military affecting the children. But should we fear them or pity them? No matter.

Today, directors Alexander Bustillo and Julien Maury returned to the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Films to introduce their newest effort, entitled "Aux Yeux des Vivants", which more or less translates in English as "Amongst the Living". Nearly everyone in the public was also present at this exact same spot a couple of years ago already, for the premiere of "À l'intérieur" a.k.a. "Inside", and thus we all knew to prepare for another potentially sickening and heart-wrenching horror film with explicit violence, disturbing atmosphere and nearly unendurable suspense. Bustillo and Maury are truly gifted and visionary young film makers who really understood the secret formula to genuinely terrifying and successful horror! They don't avoid any taboo subjects or sensitive themes and confront the viewers with their deepest fears and darkest nightmares. "À l'intérieur" entirely revolved on an extreme terror siege against a 9-months pregnant woman (with some of the cruelest torment sequences ever registered on film), while "Aux Yeux des Vivants" shamelessly handles about physically deformed children and shamelessly depicts uncompromising violence against innocent women and underage children. More importantly even, it's has been a very long time since I witnessed so many utterly intense and uncomfortable scenes of non-stop suspense. The usually always noisy and over-enthusiast crowd at the Brussels' Film Festival often turned very quiet and timid when gazing at some of the expanded and massively unnerving scenes where the young protagonists are stalked in their own houses. It's the last day of school before summer vacation and the troublesome trio Victor, Tom and Dan decide to leave early for a bit of exploring the countryside and committing a bit of random petty crimes like arson. They end up at the abandoned exterior film studios Blackwoods and witness how a masked figure drags a kidnapped woman out the trunk of a car and into an underground lair. We viewers already saw during the intro of the film that the studios might be the hideout place of what's left of a severely dysfunctional family. The boys return home and get punished for their acts by their parents, but that's nothing compared to the horror that awaits them later that night… The mysterious figure followed them home and plans to silence them forever. Strangely enough, quite a lot of the violence occurs off-screen, but still the suggestive terror and intense atmosphere is almost unbearable. I will, for example, always remember a specific scene featuring a ringing mobile phone and an icky clown's mask…Now that is what I call real horror! Bustillo and Maury are even so talented that they manage to make the oldest and most clichéd sentence in horror cinema history – "There is something under my bed" – still as petrifying as never seen before! And, for the sick puppies amongst you, don't worry too much about my remark regarding off-screen violence, as there still is plentiful of gore and bloodshed featuring on-screen as well. The three young protagonists give away remarkably stellar performances and they receive excellent support from more experienced French actors and actresses like Francis Renaud, Anne Marivin and Béatrice Dalle. Personally, I still regard "À l'intérieur" as slightly superior – mainly because the nature and motivation of villain is more realistic in this film – but "Aux Yeux des Vivants" is nevertheless also a must-see horror movie for the true and most courageous fans of the genre!