i-Lived – 2 out of 5
In my life I will stumble upon the existence of a movie and
I’ll decide, for varying reasons, that I want to watch it and I’ll put it on my
list of movies to check out. Too often
the movie will sit on my list for a long period of time and I will eventually
forget the exact reason I added it to begin with. This is the case with i-Lived. I one day read about this somewhere and thought
it sounded like one of those accidentally funny low-budget horror movies but,
for the life of me, I can’t remember when and where I read about it. Anyway, this whole bit was just a way to
lazily open up this review and mirror the way this film lazily starts its
conflict—which, I’ll admit, was just an accident. In case you haven’t guessed, I wasn’t too
impressed with this one.
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| On the can on a smartphone, is this real life? |
Josh (Jeremiah Watkins) is a young man struggling to make a
living in the viral online world as an app reviewer. One day, he reviews an app meant to improve
your life and attain your goals called i-Lived.
After not achieving his goal he sets in the app, he gives it a bad
review but discovers the app is trying to get him a win in life that he so
desperately needs. After assisting him
in picking up a girl at a bar, he withdraws his original review and gives it a
new, glowing one. As he goes further
down the rabbit hole of the app, it helps him in getting the career he wants,
the woman he lusts for, and seeing his sick mother get better. However, as soon as he decides he’s done with
the app, everything starts to crumble and he learns there might be some
sinister forces after him.
 |
| More like i-'m-About-To-Die, amirite? I'll be here all week. (Told you I'd do another one of these dumb jokes) |
I won’t pull any punches here and claim that I had high
expectations for i-Lived. The movie’s
story centers on an app and it’s meant to be a horror/thriller. Anytime a horror movie decides to use
technology as a catalyst for its action and terror my expectations are very low
(this might be why I haven’t taken the time to watch Black Mirror yet). I will admit that I didn’t end up finding the
film to be a complete waste of time nor would I call it “stupid” or “lame” but
I’m also not going to act like I watched a sleeper hit either. For the most part, this film is a
stereotypical low-budget horror movie and it, unfortunately, doesn’t really
provide much that worked in grabbing and keeping me engaged but, surprisingly,
it does have a few hidden glints of promise in its otherwise silly premise and
delivery.
 |
| The stupid app was easier to swallow than believing that this girl would be interested in the dude who wants to be internet famous. |
i-Lived suffers from a lot of the problems a low-budget
horror movie suffers from but also is hindered greatly by the setbacks that
generally exist in the genre. The
production does look cheap pretty often and, while it is easy to accept and
suspend disbelief, there’s no denying that this problem exists. For example, the “internet” moments that show
Josh’s show looks pretty weak and have the feel of what the early 00’s thought
the viral video craze would look like rather than feeling like what we
experience now. Furthermore, the feature
doesn’t really have a working atmosphere.
Josh’s horrific journey never feels frightening or tense and there is
very few moments of scares that are effective or even remotely working. Finally, the premise, story and plot do not
work together well enough or contain enough substance to sustain a feature
length film. Josh’s ordeal wears thin
very quickly and sometimes feels repetitive.
Additionally, it never builds satisfactorily enough where I was able to
be invested in what I was seeing. I
won’t argue that i-Lived doesn’t have some potential to be something despite
the fact I find its premise goofy and extremely hard to take seriously as a
horror prospect, I just think that this film might have work much better as a
short.
 |
| The scares are very sparse in this one but this one has a small moment that is very creepy. Can you see what is creepy about it? |
Normally in low-budget horror movies I complain about how
the acting isn’t very good but I’m not really going to do that here. I won’t try and pretend that what I saw was
great but it was serviceable. The real
crime happened instead with the writing, especially with the main
character. Jeremiah Watkins is doing a
fairly decent job with his role but the problem that arises is the fact his
character is exceptionally unlikable.
Aside from the fact he has a sick mother, there’s very few factors about
him that makes him sympathetic and someone that you wish to see survive. Most of the time, Josh comes off as obnoxious
(especially during his video segments) and when he’s not this, he’s too bland
and dull to engage with and that leaves you remembering him acting like a
doofus that is begging for attention on his video series.
 |
| Him looking like Logan Paul didn't help things. |
I found myself completely unable to care
about the character and get invested in whether he survives the ordeal or
not. This is way too common place in the
genre of horror where an unlikable character is presented as the lead and it
makes for an awkward viewing experience.
It’s sometimes fun to cheer for the antagonist in a thriller/horror but
you still need a central character that you want to survive or you’re just left
with an unfulfilling waste of time. Josh
never truly becomes an interesting character as he is too annoying to be
entertaining and has a best friend who is a straight-up D-bag and that left me
watching a movie that has me feeling nothing for the main character or anyone
who aligns themselves with him. This
also makes a movie that already feels like it should have just been a short
feel even longer.
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| I am really disappointed that the best friend, who is a gross misogynist, didn't meet a violent end. |
One thing that did surprise me about i-Lived is the fact the
movie does have one or two decent, well-crafted scares and also provides a cool
reveal moment when a part of the mystery of the app is revealed. I won’t get into Spoilers but there is a
point where Josh makes a startling discovery about previous moments in his
story and it made me want to skip back through the film and revisit these
moments to see if this reveal was actually there the whole time and I never
paid attention to it. This is just
another reason why I think this movie should have been made a short because
these fleeting moments would have, most likely, carried even greater weight if
they weren’t bookended by a lot of dragging narrative and running time.
 |
| A short would also eliminate most of the awful mugging the character of Josh does. |
I have a hard time overlooking that i-Lived centers on an
app that ultimately takes the main character down a path of ruin because I just
think that is a silly premise but there are some things that ultimately worked
in the film’s favor. Granted, the
drawbacks this film had were numerous and made watching it feel a bit like a
chore as it never really feels like it is getting up and going or even on the
verge of getting up and going. Still, with
all this being said, the film could have been a lot worse and might have
actually been about a haunted app or something even dumber. One thing remains; however, I do believe this
feature might have made an excellent short film. Its core concept is simple enough and a
no-nonsense, no-filler short feature would have exploited that concept
terrifically.
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