EIFF 2025: I Live Here Now
Julie Pacino's psychological horror is overstuffed with ideas, and very few of them are adequately explored
Comparing any surreal, genre-fluid movie to David Lynch's work is often a hack move in film criticism. That being said, the feature debut of writer-director Julie Pacino actively courts such comments.
For one thing, Sheryl Lee's supporting character is introduced with a specific arm gesture that evokes her role in Twin Peaks; at the very end, Lynch is among just six names that "the director wishes to thank". Another is David Corenswet, our latest Superman. Thinking up possible explanations for Corenswet's inclusion in the credits leaves one with more to ponder than Pacino's tiring feature, which is a sporadically striking horror that's simultaneously threadbare and overstuffed.
To the movie's credit, the ways in which its emotional resonance and initially vibrant aesthetic weaken are at least attributable to a surplus of ambition. Largely set in a crumbling, reality-bending motel, the film follows Rose (Lucy Fry), a struggling actress whose life is upended by an unwanted pregnancy, jeopardising a career opportunity that's already encouraging an unhealthy relationship with her body – her autonomy over which is also under threat from the wicked mother (Lee) of her useless beau (Matt Rife).
As Rose loses her direction, so too does the film after a strong start. With both inspired imagery and some far more stock, Pacino gestures vaguely towards more and more new themes, reaching intriguing ends with few of them. It's less a demonstration of just how interconnected disparate forms of pain and trauma can be, and more that a promising young director could stand to leave some eggs out of an overflowing basket of ideas.
I Live Here Now had its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival as part of its Midnight Madness strand