‘I Live Here Now’ review: Julie Pacino’s vividly realised debut plays out in remote California motel

Dir: Julie Pacino. US. 2025. 92mins.

“Why do you make every thing so bizarre?” aspiring actress Rose (Lucy Fry) is requested by her boyfriend Travis (Matt Rife) close to the beginning of Julie Pacino’s trippy psychological horror debut I Dwell Right here Now. Some would possibly discover themselves eager to ask the filmmaker the identical query, because the heightened sense of actuality is so overpowering that her central character appears barely tethered to the true world. Whereas Pacino presents a visually fashionable journey into Rose’s psyche, elevated by high-calibre ensemble performances from the female-centric solid, the shortage of any preliminary grounding in normality makes the heroine’s journey much less emotionally gripping than it might need been.

Extra prone to enchantment to followers of twisted psychogeography than gore

It’s no shock the visuals are the dominant characteristic of Pacino’s movie, because it began life as her NFT pictures sequence of the identical title, which impressed her to jot down the script and helped fund its improvement. Rooted in questions of trauma survival, physique picture and self-determination, I Dwell Right here Now premieres at Fantasia earlier than transferring on to Locarno and Edinburgh. Additional style pageant play appears possible, and the title recognition of Pacino (daughter of actor Al) is not going to damage in terms of attracting consideration. Utopia will launch the movie in North America.

Pacino presents a nightmarish second from Rose’s childhood as she introduces the character and her trauma concurrently. The author/director’s puzzlebox of a story presents visible cues from the beginning that may discover their echoes in a while, although she is extra all for crafting the assorted items than in constructing a neat narrative.

The vast majority of the motion performs out in a weird, distant motel in California’s Idyllwild. Rose has fled from Travis and his overbearing mom (Sheryl Lee) after a shock revelation, and wildfires are encroaching. Using saturated color and the manufacturing design from Hannah Rawson and Lucie Brooks Butler lean in direction of Dario Argento and David Lynch, however it’s the non-sequitur model and surreality of Alice In Wonderland that appears the best affect.

That is in proof from the second Rose is obtainable a complimentary glass of ’pink milk tonic’ on check-in at The Crown Inn, which virtually screams, ’Don’t drink me!’ The recent pink punch of this transitional second is additional emphasised by Pacino’s desaturation of the color palette in earlier scenes. The construction underlines the movie’s literary inclinations, which unfolds as chapters of a guide.

The motel – which in a marker of the arch humour Pacino employs all through, has suites named The Lovin’ Oven and Seventh Heaven – can also be stuffed with predictably odd denizens. Proprietor Ada (Lara Clear) is a lush, whereas the bright-as-a-button nature of receptionist Sid (Sarah Wealthy) is in stark distinction to the extra disturbing aura given off by visitor Lillian (The Handmaid’s Story’s Madeline Brewer). Rose’s already off-kilter actuality comes absolutely off the rails as the true and imagined churn along with the current and the previous, and it turns into clear these new acquaintances are sides of a much bigger image. Pacino employs a smattering of physique horror and a leap scare or two, however the result’s extra prone to enchantment to followers of twisted psychogeography than gore.

The sturdy use of color helps cinematographer Aron Meinhardt stoke environment, and he’s aided by editor Matyas Fekete (working alongside Raaghav Minocha), who as a frequent collaborator with Peter Strickland, is not any stranger to sewing collectively hallucinatory tales. The rating from Jackson Greenberg and Pam Autuori (who data below the title TOMI) is equally psychedelic, its use of percussion and panting vocals including to the final sense of hysteria.

I Dwell Right here Now is anchored by Fry’s collected efficiency, as she performs it straight in opposition to the upper register employed by the remainder of the solid – together with Cara Seymour as Rose’s acerbic casting agent Cindy. Whereas it might profit from extra plot underpinning and again story, it is a vividly realised debut that invitations the viewer to take the journey with Rose as she works out what position she desires to play in her personal life.