I Live Here Now Fantasia Review: Slick Horror Homage

Lucy Fry stars in I Live Here Now, a dreamlike homage to horror classics in which a young woman reckons with trauma in a strange motel.

Concerned with the competing and intersecting traumas that build up throughout our lives, the narrative appears simple enough until a plunge down the rabbit hole takes us to a very different film indeed. Rose (Lucy Fry) is a struggling actor who might finally have found her big shot when her agency puts her forward for an audition. However, an unexpected pregnancy, a run-in with her boyfriend’s unsupportive mother (Sheryl Lee) and a journey to the abortion clinic eventually lead her to the Crown Inn, an isolated motel inhabited by larger than life characters who match its startlingly multicoloured interiors.

The early scenes make for as drab and lifeless a depiction of the life of a wannabe movie star as you’re likely to find. They aren’t in black and white, but they might as well be, so the effect of entering the motel is akin to the famous burst of technicolor as Dorothy sets foot in Oz for the first time. There, Rose meets the permanently grinning staff members Ada (Lara Clear) and Sid (Sarah Rich) who seem drunk on the ethereal atmosphere and questionable-looking cocktails. Before long, our protagonist is under the same spell, as time starts to bend, reality unfolds, and ghosts of the past make appearances in the liminal space of the inn, a sickly sweet blend of Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge and Barbieland. 

It’s a visual feast boasting distinctive set design and costuming that really bursts out on 35mm, particularly when the film gets thematically and visually darker and the contrasts of Pacino and DP Aron Meinhardt’s rich colour palette come into play. The often breakneck tempo and nauseating long takes recall Darren Aronofsky’s similarly themed Mother!, whose star turn from Jennifer Lawrence can be seen in Fry’s impressive, full-body performance. In parallel with our own attempt to follow what the hell is going on, Rose is continually disorientated yet determined to keep a cool head; after all, amidst all the chaos she still has a self-tape for that big role to send to the agency. 

Clear, Rich and Madeline Brewer, playing another motel guest, put in serviceable performances, but it’s Lee that stands out among the supporting cast, as she usually does. Her status as an iconic ‘scream queen’ and involvement in David Lynch projects act as a seal of quality to this surrealist Americana driven by female experience, but she’s more than a token here – her turn as the controlling Martha is at once campy and ghastly. If only we saw more of it.

A work so keen to pay homage to its forebears will inevitably feel somewhat derivative, and I Live Here Now doesn’t do an awful lot that that Lynch, Argento or Charlie Kaufman haven’t shown us before. There are a few swipes at contemporary capitalism and its relation to trauma and women’s bodies that are of interest, but really this works best as an exercise in genre and abstraction. It’s an indication of great things to come from Pacino, while Fry seems to have found her rhythm bringing to life these multidimensional female horror protagonists.

I Live Here Now had its World Premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival, in the Cheval Noir section, on July 24, 2025. The film will be screened again on July 25.