Vampire Ballerinas Soar in ‘Livid’ [Retrospective]
Livid (French: Livide) was buried like Rex at the end of The Vanishing. Full transparency, I saw it long before its 2022 United States debut on the horror streaming service Shudder. And, no, I did not see it at TIFF in 2011 (I was 16), nor did I catch it at Sitges that same year. I was still sixteen. I saw it via a janky digital rip that I pirated online because I was in high school and I thought I was cool. The most challenging part, of course, was finding a decent subtitle track. I couldn’t, so my first experience was a strange one. Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s Livid is unusual as is, and it’s rendered all the more confounding by amateurish English subtitles.
I didn’t learn my lesson, repeating the same process with Among the Living, the directing duo’s third feature that was similarly delayed for years before arriving in the United States. Unlike Livid, Among the Living presently isn’t streaming anywhere. Livid is the better of the two by a wide margin, a gem unfairly constrained by a laggard international rollout (which, it turns out, is unfortunately common for the pair’s releases). While it might be easy to reduce Livid to an artifact, a restrained sophomore feature from the filmmakers behind one of the century’s scariest—and goriest—horror movies, it more than warrants a second look. Especially today. Abigail, a vampire ballerina movie from another seminal horror directing duo, arrives in theaters this week. Livid is—you guessed it—a vampire ballerina movie.
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Vampire ballet movie? Ballet movie with vampires? The language aside, it’s uncannily similar how, both behind and in front of the camera, both features are. It’s Dante’s Peak and Volcano all over again, although this time, they’re releasing more than a decade apart. Either before or after you catch Abigail—which, by the way, I hear is great—I would encourage you to seek out Livid. It’s sensational, a gorgeous, gothic upheaval of home invasion tropes that lands with vampiric efficiency. It swerves where Inside fans might expect it to stay its course. Here, the interest is less in how much blood Maury and Bustillo can shed (though rest assured, they still spill plenty), and more in how they can convincingly stage a contemporary fairytale flanked by carnage.
I had the pleasure of interviewing both filmmakers a few years ago after reviewing their feature, Kandisha, and beyond being remarkably chill guys, it was clear their intention was to subvert expectations whenever possible. 2017’s Leatherface, their only English-language release, is probably the closest match for Inside, though gauging the rest of the filmography, audiences would be forgiven for having no idea about the maelstrom of gruesomeness they both unleashed in 2007. Gore isn’t the only point, and by limiting its use in Livid, it’s clearer there than in any other release of theirs just how stylish and provocative they are as filmmakers.
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Chloé Coulloud’s Lucy is training to be an at-home nurse under the stewardship of Mrs. Wilson (Catherine Jacob). While visiting a client in a remarkably Grimm mansion that would rattle Hansel and Gretel to their core, Mrs. Wilson, perhaps intentionally, shares that the patient, Mrs. Deborah Jessel, is rumored to have treasure hidden somewhere within the home among the old furniture and uncannily lifelike stuffed animals.
Lucy, her boyfriend, Will (Félix Moati), and his brother, Ben (Jérémy Kapone) hatch a sensational Halloween night plan (augmented, as most Halloween-set movies are, by Silver Shamrock mask cameos). An early augur for what Fede Álvarez would accomplish with Don’t Breathe, the trio breaks into the home, finding horrors far worse than what they could have imagined. It’s a classic villain-become-victims bit, though the Grimm mastery witch which Maury and Bustillo let their action unfurl—music boxes, living corpses, those damned animals—renders it distinct in an ever-crowded horror space.
Upon release, Livid was met with the critical equivalent of a shrug. No one outright hated it, necessarily, though as a follow-up to Inside, fans and critics alike were disappointed. I get it in some sense. I was lucky enough to write an essay on Inside for the Second Sight release. More than that, I think it’s one of the most important horror releases of the century. I love Livid, though the case for influence was, at one point, harder to make. With the years that follow, however, it is getting easier.
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I already noted the clear throughline between Livid and both Abigail and Don’t Breathe, though its blend of grounded, sepia-toned horrors and fantastical elements was an early sign of the genre’s present shift toward more transgressive, unclassifiable, weird genre fare (think Malignant or Barbarian). There’s class consciousness and also a bevy of veiled ballerinas beating a man to death as the camera spins wildly. Bustillo and Maury have their genre cake and eat it too.
The Jessels, of course, are vampires, aided by a lineage of old ballet students desperate to keep their secret hidden away. In its third act, viewers will either be on board or not. Livid takes big swings, introducing incredulous twists, moth pupae, and eerily earnest finales rendered with Lifetime schmaltz. That it would even work a little bit would be a miracle—that it works as well as it does is a testament to Bustillo and Maury’s tight command of tone and genre bonafides. It’s not Inside, but the finale does have plenty of split heads and flayed flesh.
While I haven’t yet had a chance to catch Abigail, its release, I hope, will inspire genre fans new and old to seek Livid out. It’s truly weird cinema, not the ostensibly weird, but ultimately safe kind we’re getting more regularly today. Its biggest swings might not work for everyone, but it’s a gorgeous (gorgeous) slice of contemporary gothic, a stellar sophomore feature, and as solid a reminder as any that Maury and Bustillo are some of the most exciting voices working within horror today.
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