How I Live Now

Plot synopsis:
Daisy, a neurotic and anorexic American teenager, is sent to the English countryside for the summer to stay with her Aunt Penn and her cousins, Eddie, Isaac, and Piper. She arrives at Heathrow Airport to tightened security and reports of a bombing in Paris, and Isaac drives to her cousins' farm, which she discovers to be dilapidated and very messy. Although initially abrasive, Daisy warms to them upon learning that her deceased mother used to stay there frequently. She also falls in love with Eddie, her eldest cousin, finding him to be as introverted and strong-willed as she, and noticing his unusual, almost mystical connection to animals. A few days after her arrival, her aunt flies to Geneva to attend an emergency conference because she is an expert in terrorist extremist groups, and the group takes advantage of her absence to explore their local woodlands.
Their summer fun ends when a terrorist coalition detonates a nuclear bomb in London that potentially kills hundreds of thousands; the nuclear fallout reaches as far away as their home. In the aftermath, electricity goes out, and they learn from an emergency radio broadcast that martial law has been imposed. The next day, an American consular official arrives at the house and offers Daisy passage home. Unable to help her cousins, he advises them to remain indoors and wait for evacuation. After they move to a nearby barn, Daisy has sex with Eddie and decides that she would rather stay with them. The next day, however, the British Army storms the shelter and takes them to a nearby town. There, they learn boys and girls are to be evacuated to separate parts of the country. Both Eddie and Daisy resist separation, and Daisy is restrained with cable ties; Eddie calls to her to return to their home when she gets the chance. Daisy and Piper are taken to the home of a British Army major and his wife, who foster them. Determined to escape, Daisy discreetly begins hoarding supplies, but their neighbourhood is attacked by the enemy before she has time to take everything she needs.
As Daisy and Piper hike through the countryside, Daisy interprets her dreams of Eddie as indications of his current situation. One night, Daisy is woken up and witnesses a gang-rape. She and Piper flee, but after Piper starts whining, Daisy threatens to abandon her. Already disturbed by the prior experience, they discover a massacre at the camp where Isaac and Eddie were taken. Daisy reluctantly checks the bodies; although Eddie is not among the dead, Isaac's body is. She mournfully takes his glasses and later buries them. As they leave, they are spotted by two armed men, who chase them through the woods. Piper and Daisy decide to hide, but the men discover Piper. Daisy threatens them with a gun and impulsively shoots them both; she kills one and wounds the other. The horror of what she has done, along with her fears, begins to take its toll on Daisy. Later, she realises that they have lost their map and compass, and the girls are on the verge of giving up when they see Eddie's pet hawk fly overhead. They realise it will lead them home and follow it.
Upon arriving home, their elation turns to horror when they discover that the military garrison stationed there has been massacred; the house is ransacked and empty; only Jet, Piper's dog, remains. Eddie is not at the barn where they took shelter either, and although Piper is elated to be home, Daisy breaks down in tears outside. The next day, however, the two hear Jet barking, and Daisy runs out into the woods, where she finds Eddie lying unconscious; he has severe burns, gashes, and his eyes are swollen shut. As she nurses him, a ceasefire is announced, electricity is returned, a new government forms, and the country begins to recover. However, it becomes clear Eddie suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is mute. After he accidentally cuts himself while gardening, Daisy tenderly sucks the blood from his cut, which mimics his actions earlier. She kisses Eddie, hoping he may soon recover.

Tags: comedy, realism, murder, anti war, violence, atmospheric, flashback

Review:
Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) is a young, broody, moody, American girl who is sent to stay with extended family in the English countryside.
In a World War III type scenario, she is taken away from those she now considers family in the first and with only the companionship of her young cousin Piper (Harley Bird), she must journey back across the warn torn English countryside, to the place she wants to call Home.It's a curious pick n' mix type story that in some ways feels like two genres melded together.
The immediate narrative feels very much like a teen 'chick flick', but this is played out over a dark backdrop that at times feels course and close to the bone.To me, the running commentary of Daisy the American girl, outlining her disciplined set of rules and paranoia, felt a little cheesy in its attempt to force home the difference between English and American culture.
In those and many other respects, HILN is more for the heart than the head.Good performance by Saoirse Ronan as Daisy, a brash, cantankerous, and troubled American teenager who is sent to live with some distant relatives in the English countryside.
The American teenager Elizabeth "Daisy" (Saoirse Ronan) is sent by her estranged father away from New York to the countryside of England to stay with her Aunt Penn (Anna Chancellor).
In a country in war, Daisy and Piper flee from their lodging and cross England in martial law trying to find Eddie and Isaac."How I Live Now" was a great surprise since I was expecting to see a drama about a rebel teenager and I found an original come of age story in time of contemporary war.
Initially its a fish out of water story about Saoirse Ronan's character, a difficult but intriguing American teen landing into an eccentric English rural family who live on a remote farm.
She quickly starts to fall for her handsome cousin but then world events intervene as a nuclear device is detonated in London and the film shows them dealing with the new reality of soldiers at the door, mass evacuation and the family being split up.
A spoilt, disrespectful and unappreciative Yankee girl, is sent to visit some relatives who live in the English country side, (lovely scenery, lousy story line) and when she arrives, she is collected by her 14 yr old cousin who has driven some 8hrs to pick her up (let's not worry about police and unlawful driving here): straight away this tells you there's something terribly wrong with the whole lot of them, and this is verified by the fact that the aunt is too busy with: whatever: and doesn't make an effort or an appearance, to welcome her niece who's travelled so far to stay with them.
Then a nuclear bomb goes off in London and the two romantic lovers are separated by the British military, and the second half of the movie is about her trying trying to find him again: I.e Cinderella looking for Prince Charming, and they live happily ever after.
Yet this love is the frame of the film as she leads her younger cousin Piper (Harley Bird) back home from the compound for sequestered rural residents in her hope to reunite with Eddie.This romance gives me pause about the Hunger Games, whose young love now seems mature by contrast.If How I Live Now is a metaphoric treatise on Eve's journey out of paradise or teens' need to engage their natural instincts and chuck the superficiality of urban life, then the film has succeeded.
For a man who has given us the cinematic treasure that is Touching the Void and the high standard dramas in the form of The Last King of Scotland and State of Play it becomes quite bewildering to think that he has now also given us this pulseless and pathetic attempt of a film in the form of How I Live Now.A deserved box office and critical dud upon release this adaptation of Meg Rossoff's somewhat famous book of the same name is such a wasted opportunity to produce something meaningful that you must wonder where it all went so horribly wrong.
Macdonald directs in a very workmanlike effort that features one stand out scene at a picnic, which goes to showcase the film could have been something very scary and also very real yet quickly falls into unbelievable incest romance with two wholly uninteresting teenagers and unlikeable teenagers.Saoirse Ronan has consistently shown herself to be a fine young actress and in How I Live Now she still can hold her head high despite being given a horrible character to portray.
Ronan's Daisy is an annoying type of character and her quick falling in love with cousin Eddie is so rushed and forced you'll have to think twice about if your actually witnessing some type of black comedy instead of weighty romance/drama lampooning in the very real setting of a World War 3 scenario.
While these characters in the film are quite weak the actual story feels forced and contrived also, a sense of dread is never fully formed and the weight of what has occurred at these children's doorstep is also not fully felt.A lame dead in the water movie, How I Live Now is an appealing film for those teenagers that think Tomorrow When the War Began is classic filmmaking and for those that can't get enough of unbelievable teen romances but for the rest of us it's a torrid journey that a fine filmmaker like Kevin Macdonald should of made a better go at.1 concrete road pillar out of 5 For more movie reviews and opinions check out - www.jordanandeddie.wordpress.com.
The little girl in the movie seemed stand out from the rest and the whole love story seemed a bit quick and strange.
Scottish director, Kevin Macdonald, who has had some hits (The Last King of Scotland) and some misses (The Eagle) delivers a film that I would rank in the middle, not as good as his best movies, but not as bad either.
But at the same time the film is also very hard to connect with because the main character is introduced as a hateful and guarded teenager who slowly begins to change when she falls in love with her cousin.
She shines in a film that changes tones and moods very quickly and Ronan is just captivating despite all the issues I had with this film.Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) is an American teenager who is sent to England to spend the summer with her cousins at their countryside home.
The love story was also pretty weird considering she begins a relationship with her cousin and never has second thoughts about incest or anything like that.
Beautiful English countryside, fun loving British kids, a somewhat mute animal psychic bloodsucking (non vampire) older brother, and falconry.Burnt chicken topped with canned spaghetti, hyperactive pink rabbit eared dog, thermonuclear snow, tire rafting, first cousin copulation, and yelping/human body scavenging red foxes (Vulpes).9mm double taps, treetops adorned with dead bodies, an eye wear burial in the forest, bloody socks, and orange puke.Oh - and did I forget to mention, the UK nuked, a bitch girl from New York City, and being chased by dead rabbits ?
In all the recent films I've seen by her, except Hanna, like How I Live Now, The Host, Lovely Bones, etc., she always seems to have this very mushy teenage romance going on.
i dont know wich one is worst.Daisy was doing a great job, and turns out her present become more strong when she do it by her self like the rest 50 minute in movie.
you take a supernatural event (vampires/aliens etc), or, in this case, an 'action one,' then add in a teen romance in the middle of it and – hey presto – you have your movie.Miserable American teenager 'Daisy' comes to England (against her wishes, but then everything seems to be against her wishes) to stay with a family of posh countryfolk (if that isn't a contradiction in terms?) and she falls in love with the boy who keeps taking his shirt off.
However, as an adult (and a miserable cynical one at that), I found it all a little predictable and the British acting more like Americans THINK the British should, rather than how we do.However, it is well-acted and very atmospheric, almost portraying a World War 2 scenario in modern times.
American cousin Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) is sent to live with her British family.
I felt no empathy towards him and really was quite disappointed he was still alive at the end.Given that I could not develop any feelings towards the two main characters this movie was doomed to fall flat.The backdrop of a war was equally frustrating.
There are hints of terrorism again with reference to poisoned water supplies which again is implausible given real life military history.The rest of the film revolves around our American lass escaping with the young girl, seeing small snippets of a decaying society (all men are rapists apparently) and trying to return home.
And we are meant to hope that Eddie finds himself eventually and they live as a new nuclear family.Suspend belief, try to ignore the incest and the needless naked running through the forest dream scene and the unlikely ending and yes there are enjoyable parts of this film.
The most redeeming quality of this film was the lovely British countryside shown.The story is thin and hard to believe, one more example of how a bad script is impossible to transform into good film.It amazes me some of the glowing reviews on IMDb...either these people were watching a different film or working for Film 4.This is the story of an American girl, Daisy (Ronan), who comes to visit English cousins mainly because her father is too busy to look after her and her mother is dead.
Yet her visit oddly is ill timed being on the verge of a nuclear war that supposedly wipes out London an spreads fallout over a wide area...radioactive ash that cover everything yet doesn't seem to affect the Daisy and Co.Even though she initially dislikes her new home, she just as quickly falls for her teenage cousin Eddie.
On the other hand the unknown enemy invaders seem intent on killing civilians.Eventually the bulk of the film revolves around Daisy trying to get back to her first love Eddie, with her youngest cousin Piper in tow.
How I Live Now is a realistic film following an American girl getting stuck in England when World War 3 breaks out.
Dear UK National Lottery, please stop wasting money funding utter rubbish such as this load of poorly acted tripe.Much like a lot of Lottery funded films over the years this is a film that would never have been (and indeed should never have been) made if it weren't for the funding grant this film received, unfortunately it did and it was.There are some good ideas here, the tension leading up to and the subsequent occurrences of a nuclear explosion works but is quickly glossed over, there is confusion as to whether this was a story about a terrorist attack and its aftermath or a war with an invading force of unidentified origin.Coupled with a cast that (with the exception of the criminally underused Anna Chancellor) couldn't act their way out of a paper bag let alone a post nuclear crisis and you have a badly stitched together mess.There were far too many plot holes, far too much unexplained and too many cardboard characters that quite frankly no one cared about, especially the leading lady who was just awful.
A girl travels from the States to England to face nuclear war and the film chronicles her encounters with the relatives she stayed with during this time.Trying to rate this as a cinematic experience, I must admit that it was stimulating enough to keep the audience engaged which is always a plus although I have few issues with the storyline and the message it tried to convey.Somewhere between the prospect of total nihilism, a girl that hears voices arrives to visit relatives who although gladly host her she is rudely hostile to them all.
This is a movie that explores both.An Anerican teenager and her English cousin embark on a sexual relationship against the backdrop of WW3 but get separated and she must go on a journey to be reunited after a terror attack in London separates them.Phoned in performances meet flat direction in a movie that doesn't know whether it's trying to be thought provoking, romance or thriller and ends up falling short on all three instead of succeeding at any of them.Pure garbage.
This British set, British produced film is yet another based on a popular piece of Young Adult literature, though dating back a decade to the terse post 9.11 period when all comfortable certainties seemed gone and death could strike right at our very doorsteps once again.The storyline features troubled (of course) teen Elizabeth (Saoirse Ronan), a New York girl who is a neurotic, living by rules gleaned from magazines and TV, terrified of germs and infection, and convinced she is hexed, since her mother died giving birth to her.
The main problem is that it's all been seen and done before so many times, in the old post nuclear dramas ("Survivors", "The Day After", etc) in the original "Red Dawn", "Cold Mountain" and others, and bleak post-apocalyptic dramas like "The Road" "A Boy and his dog" "War of the Worlds" (2005) and of course "28 days later", which this film most obviously resembles.
American-girl, Daisy, is shipped off to England to live with her cousins in a rural area so she can get embroiled in a war.
Eddie yells to her to remember what he told her (that they should always make their way back to the farm area if anything bad happens since it's their eternal happy place).The girls are sent to live with a Scottish woman in a nice house inside a military-like installation.
The impact of terrorism first on the idyllic lives of the film's youngsters, and then on the country as a whole was delivered in a harsh and unpalatable way, which made the film very watchable.You could argue the film is over sentimental, I even heard someone say it felt like terrorists had invaded The Twilight Sage, I can understand, the 'true love' did seem a little overplayed, stretch belief beyond that and it's a film well worth watching.Saoirse Ronan is good value for money, the transformation in her character was very well done.
New York teenager Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) is sent to stay with her cousins in rural England.
Daisy escapes with young Piper and makes her way back to the house where she is eventually reunited with Eddie, who was been damaged by his experiences.This rather curious film is based on a successful novel, and I rather fancy that the narrative development works rather better on the page than it does on screen.
It should be me - I'm all for apocalyptic story lines, and I love Saoirse Ronan - but, while the apocalyptic stuff works well, the set-up takes too long, Daisy is hugely unsympathetic in the early stages (being out of sorts with everyone for reasons which are never made clear in the film), and there is a strong air of Young Adult/teen romance being the driving force behind the film It is also perforated by unnecessary instances of the F-bomb.My verdict: not unsuccessful, but could have been better..
I felt that this is a film worth watching, not for the action nor the romance, but for the determination one can have in times of difficulty, to hold on to a particular promise with such perseverance, enough to push her back home.Read more: http://tiffanyyong.com/2014/01/17/how-i-live-now-movie- review/.
Unfortunately though, it did.Characters and StoryFor the movie, our lead character is Daisy (played by Saoirse Ronan) who begins as an annoying American who as time goes on we learn has some sort of anxiety issue.
Then terrorist hit London and send the film into war mode.With this, the boys and girls are separated and Daisy ends up stuck with her little cousin Piper (played by Harley Bird) who is this sweet and eccentric little thing, but at the same time a child who grew up in a slightly neglectful household.
Ronan as a seemingly stereotypical American just makes you roll your eyes, and at times I did wish Bird's Piper was the focus for the story she could have had was more appealing to me.Overall: TV ViewingThough certainly not the best film out there, it surely isn't the worst.
Kevin Macdonald's "How I Live Now" stars Saoirse Ronan as Daisy, an American teenager sent to the English countryside to visit several cousins.
what I like mostly of this movie is that You don't know for sure what twist is going to take and the way it flows was really good, that's a high point for the director.
For me How I Live Now is an underrated movie (another one) for sure, I highly recommend, and we have the plus to see Soirse (pretty) Ronan, and off course the rest of the cast, Tom Holland, George MacKay, Harley Bird, they were really good..
I thought her romance with Eddie was a bit rushed and nobody in the film even mentioned the incest going on between them, but overall Saoirse did an excellent job.I also liked Piper, played by Harley Bird, although at times, I thought she put a bit too much emphasis on some of her lines.
Daisy and Piper seemed more like sisters than cousins and I think their relationship was portrayed very well and became the heart and soul of the film.
But what I don't understand is that Daisy, the American that comes to live with her British cousins, falls in love with the oldest one, Eddie.