How I Live Now

Trailer- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSaxm68PPT4

A reason this film wasn't as popular as it might have been is because no one I know really knew what it was about. Another poster/trailer rant here but the poster makes it look like a coming of age indie film and and the trailer makes it look like Twilight. To be fair however it is hard to market How I Live now as just one genre. It is a teen romance, mixed with a war drama, mixed with an arty indie coming of age film. Throw in some horror and make parts of it look a bit like Midsomer Murders and you have How I Live Now.

The film follows a girl who comes over from America to stay with her cute little English relatives out in the countryside. What makes things a little more interesting is that World War III is kicking off somewhere in the distance and when it reaches them it hits them hard. The film quickly goes from being very 'Famous Five' and first love to an actually pretty harrowing struggle to stay alive.

The shift in tone is pretty jarring but in that way it sort of works. To go from all smiles and niceness to such horribleness makes the struggles of Ronan's character harder to watch. The film sets her up to be this horrible bitch of a girl and the 'war changes people' message is a little obvious and a bit hammed on. But as clunky as the storytelling is I did end up really liking her character.

What's not so great is when the film tries to be much more arty than it is. There's a lot of inner monologues and 'close ups for some reason' at the start of the film which thankfully become less and less as the story grows darker. Whenever the sound goes all rumbley and she starts spouting out crap that's supposed to mean something in her head 'TAKE RISKS, AVOID CONFRONTATION, DON'T BE HELD BACK' it feels pretty self indulgent and more than anything just annoying.

When the film is best is when it feels like a ITV daytime war drama but set in modern say times. At pointss it does feel like it's based on a book and you're almost aware of it going chapter to chapter. The book it's based on I assume is very enjoyable though because the journey Ronan's character goes on really sucked me in. The death and darkness was probably less startling in the book than it is the film, but in that way I suppose it hits harder. There's a difference in reading about a boy getting shot and actually seeing it (as much as it's all 'pretend') which makes watching scenes How I live Now a little more shocking than you'd expect.

It's a film that could be enjoyed quite universally I think and one that'd be easy to watch with the family at Christmas if you can handle the later scenes. It sort of feels like a really good TV movie and would recommend a watch if you can ignore some of the mentioned flaws.

7/10