The Living and the Dead.

"A bizarre psychological study of degeneration and dependency, The Living and the Dead is a horror movie only in the most literal sense," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. "Skirting genre conventions, Simon Rumley's twisted feature inhabits shores where the gore is minimal and the demons unseen - neither of which makes it any less disconcerting."

"Part neo-gothic horror, part empathetic schizoid freak-out, The Living and the Dead suggests an unlikely cross between Spider and Requiem for a Dream, albeit one whose whole is less than the sum of its parts," writes Rob Humanick at Slant. That said, "Rumley - who wrote the film in response to his mother's short-lived battle with cancer - is a great humanist. The Living and the Dead, then, is most effective as a promise of greater things to come."

"The Living and the Dead is not an easy movie to sit through, and its darkness may be a little mannered, but it's an elegant construction with real emotions buried deep inside," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. It's also "a combination of the crumbling-old-house and protagonist-gone-mad genres that utterly lacks ghosts or monsters but might be an indie-horror classic of the future."

For Nick Pinkerton, writing in the Voice, the film "superficially recollects superior art shockers like In a Glass Cage and Fists in the Pocket, but substitutes jittery, unconvincing "in the mind of a madman" foolishness for the hard work of psychological acuity."

Posted by dwhudson at October 25, 2007 3:58 PM