Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

walter radunsky Simon Rumley's "The Living and the Dead" is the kind of film I would not have expected to come out in 2006. While a drama at its core, the movie is constructed of so many other narrative and cinematic nuances and is so possessed by a kind of punk spirit that it looks and feels like it could have been one of the unclassifiable classics of the 1970s. Although only a few final episodes in the life of an aristocratic English family with a mentally ill son are illustrated, these scenes are enough through which to surrealistically distill the gradual and eventual disintegration of their lives into madness and tragedy. This portrayal of tragedy is one of the characteristics that particularly makes this film so interesting. That's not to say that there is not also the element of comedy in this film. The son's character is one that many would consider humorous, at least from a distance. But Rumley takes us deep enough into the life of the son--his private words and behavior, his relationship with his parents, his drug usage, even his dreams--until our laughter is long left behind for more serious thoughts of sympathy and fear. It is as easy to emotionally respond to this film as it is to think about it on an intellectual level, as the simple yet sophisticated dialogue is brilliantly executed and perfectly compliments the literary screenplay, professional directing, artful cinematography, and everything else that makes this film as worthy of viewing as many of the unique favorites of the past.

kongen jacob 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!

perisho 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.

real_hiflyer 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.