Shudder Review: Among the Living (2014)

"So the directors of Inside decided to make themselves their own version of Stand By Me, huh?"

Released in France way back in 2014, and in many other parts of the world since then, Among the Living is finally available to U.S. audiences, thanks to the superb streaming service, Shudder.

The filmmaking duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury burst onto the Horror scene in 2007 with the superb Home Invasion Thriller, Inside (review HERE). It took them four years to deliver a follow-up film, Livide (review HERE), and yet another three years to arrive at Among the Living.

They're also the duo responsible for this year's Leatherface, which we reviewed a few days back, right HERE.

While nothing they've made since Inside comes close the the twisted perfection of that film, they sure do know how to make movies that offer gorgeous visuals and graphically disturbing bloodshed.

On Halloween night, a deranged pregnant woman tries to kill her asshole husband and mongoloid son Klarence, only to turn the knife on herself to escape her shitty existence as a French housewife. Father and son then take off to "start a new family" somewhere else.

YOU DROVE HER TO THIS!

Some years later, on the last day of school, three teenage friends decide to skip class and have some fun. After trying their best to burn an old man's barn down, the trio of Dan, Tom and Victor head for the ruins of an abandoned film studio where they find a bound and gagged woman in the trunk of a car. A man in a clown mask spots them and gives chase, but they elude him, and escape. They tell the Police their wild story only to be laughed at, because the kids are assholes who are always causing trouble and lying.

THEY KIND OF HAVE IT COMING.

Later that night, the hairless freak known as Klarence seeks each of the boys out, with the intent to kill them so that they can't tell the Police about what he and his father's new home, and the fact that they kidnap girls and force them to join their new family. Of course the no one believes the kids anyway, so really, killing them could have been avoided altogether.

Creepiness and blooshed ensue.

NOTHING CREEPY ABOUT THAT.

Among the Living had the feel of a Spielberg movie from the 80's, and I'm pretty sure that was by design. Some people have called it Stand By Me meets Slasher flick, and while I get that, I have to say that the kids in this movie aren't likable enough to draw that sort of comparison. I mean, they plot to burn down a guy's barn, and one of them almost kills his sleeping dad with an axe, so they're hardly on the same tier of lovable that the kids who starred in movies like The Goonies, Super 8, or even Stranger Things, which Among the Living definitely tries its best to vibe off of.

Seeing that the film spends a lot of time developing the kid characters, and showcasing their school-skipping adventures, you'd think that you'd want them to come off as less asshole-ish than they do.

The film gets better marks for its intensity when the kids are evading the masked creeper at the film studio, and even higher ones for ratcheting up that intensity in the 3rd act of the movie, where said creeper comes after the boys, intent on killing them all. Kudos to Maury & Bustillo for taking the film where they did; I figured it would be about the kids being trapped at the movie studio, trying to survive while being chased around, but it was kind of ingenious to turn it into a hunt-and-kill type of thing where the killer comes after them later on, in their own homes.

There are definitely parts of the movie that are unnerving, and downright scary. Klarence makes for a terrifying movie monster, and the part in the bedroom gave us chills. Uneven it might be, but it delivers on the scares. It was cool to see Maury & Bustillo regulars Beatrice Dalle and Chloe Coulloud show up in this one too.

DAT ASS.

There's gore frigging galore in this one, including, but not limited to: pregnant belly stabs, foot-in-mouth violence; a nasty cast break; a face being shorn off; and all sorts of other bloody and brutal bits throughout. The long, drawn out kill scene in the house towards the end was all kinds of disturbing.

It's odd though, that with such a bloody beginning and finale, that they don't show the kills in the middle of the movie...

GORE GALORE.

We get to see Klarence in all of his fully nude glory, and the gorgeous Chloe Coulloud sheds her top in death.

AU REVOIR, MON AMI.

While we wish that the movie had been stronger and more cohesive overall, we have to give credit to Maury & Bustillo for crafting a gorgeous, scary, and overtly-bloody film in general. It's not quite Inside, but it's still an above average effort.

Give it a watch if you're a fan of the films of the French new extremity.

C+

Among the Living is streaming now on Shudder.

Chloe Coulloud is tres magnifique.