London-based StudioCanal Limited is scheduled to release Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's Livid (Livide) on DVD and Blu-ray in the U.K. on August 13th; both the DVD and Blu-ray are now available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk (Amazon EU SARL).
Here's a description of Livid from the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF): "Step into Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's house of horror and mystery in Livid. The duo responsible for Inside - one of Midnight Madness' most beloved and bloody past selections - are back with a cinematic beast that is wholly different from their prenatal slasher. ¶ As she copes with the suicide of her mother, Lucie (Chloé Coulloud) takes a job assisting housebound seniors lost in varying states of dementia. One of her charges is very different from the rest: a renowned dancer, Madame Jessel (Marie-Claude Pietragalla) now lies comatose in a decrepit mansion. A wizened crone hooked up to a life-support system in a room surrounded by old books and arcane artefacts, Jessel is rumoured to have a small fortune stashed somewhere in her dark and dusty home. Tempted by this tale of hidden treasure, Lucie and her two friends break into the estate in search of their ticket to a new and better life. ¶ The mysterious mansion is a gorgeously detailed labyrinth of locked doors that seems to hold no reward for the threesome - until their curiosity opens a Pandora's box of unspeakable horror that twists their night into a demented punishment for their greed. The friends find themselves tormented by Jessel and her long-dead, mute daughter in a grotesque and macabre ballet of terrors danced inside a creepy puzzle box of a home. ¶ Adding a new mythology to the old-dark-house genre, and proving that they are not bound by gore, Maury and Bustillo reunite with Inside editor Baxter (responsible for cutting High Tension and The Incident, also featured in this year's Midnight Madness lineup) and cinematographer Laurent Barès (Frontier(s)) to craft a terrifying, dreamlike realm. ¶ Rather than returning to the sledgehammer style of their previous work, the directors have created a sublime and poetic kind of nightmare, pulling in more classical and phantasmagorical sources of literary horror - well, maybe not in the case of a certain brain-munching scene."
Some of the reviews of Livid remind me of what Lucio Fulci said to Robert Schlockoff about The Beyond (...E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà) and "absolute film"...
YouTube: Livid theatrical trailer
Amazon.co.uk: Livid U.K. DVD
Amazon.co.uk: Livid U.K. Blu-ray
Film Fanaddict: Interview of Lucio Fulci by Robert Schlockoff
News source: The Gomorrahizer (source of French horror movie news for over half a decade!)
