Franck Khalfoun wowed us in 2012 with Maniac, a startling first-person update of William Lustig’s sleazy 1980 classic. One of the few great remakes of the past decade, it shows a keen eye for social commentary and actually bothers to modernise/transform its story. i-Lived is Khalfoun’s fourth film as director (yet just his second writing credit after P2) and in the same way, it’s a very modern horror story.
Josh (Jeremiah Watkins) is an eccentric twenty-something vlogger who has recently acquired i-Lived, a self-help app that’s quickly becoming popular. After inputting a goal, the app sends him random tasks that lead him closer and closer to what he wants, but it also seems to be taking on a mind of its own.
At too many points Watkins’ acting, not to mention the purposefully grating characterisation, mean we have little enthusiasm for the lead character. Too often Josh’s infantile persona proves cringe-worthy, but a lot of that probably comes from an older script-writer’s reaction to YouTubers. Too often contemporary horror has a problem with the online community and millennials at large, complaining about the unsocial aspect of the internet and the zombification of teens via iPhones. Khalfoun manages to stay away from petulant whinging, but there’s other issues at work here.
As the film progresses, the idea becomes more and more intriguing: hundreds of thousands of people are achieving their goals thanks to i-Lived, Josh has a new smoking hot girlfriend (Sarah Power – The Hexecutioners), and his money woes appear to be coming to a close. But the app’s requests are escalating as his goals are, and they must be escalating for everyone else too. But we never get that, i-Lived misses several opportunities to widen its scope.
Khalfoun’s first big hit P2 is a savvy intimate take on the stalker genre, Maniac impresses both as a remake and a stand-alone, whilst i-Lived has an inconsistent sense of self-awareness. In an early scene, Josh’s house is plunged into darkness after he uploads his first review of i-Lived, the timing is chilling but ultimately tongue-in-cheek when Josh discovers the power has been cut for non-payment on bills. There’s scenes like this scattered throughout and, along with Khalfoun’s ability to pull off some great scares, they really make the film seem sharp. Unfortunately, by the finale, i-Lived makes some laughable decisions that really don’t work. Narrative choices that are so on-the-nose they make the film look immature whilst the actual execution of the film’s twist is so laboured, so dated, that it undoes much of the film’s tech-savvy ideas.
i-Lived feels like a classic story glazed with contemporary tropes and style. There’s a lot of potential but much of it is squandered through unfocused chaos and a predictable finale. Fans of Maniac shouldn’t expect ground-breaking shock, but there are enough interesting ideas to save Khalfoun’s latest from anonymity.
★★★ | Scott Clark
Horror, Thriller | France/USA, 2015 | 15 | Second Sight | Dir.Franck Khalfoun | Jeremiah Watkins, Brian Breiter, Jan Broberg | Buy:i-Lived [DVD]
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