I Live Here Now (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Julie PacinoRelease Date(s)
2025 (August 25, 2026)Studio(s)
Utopia/Punch Once/N8 (Vinegar Syndrome Pictures)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A
Review
Lucy Fry (Vampire Academy) stars as Rose, an actress wrestling with a nice pile of demons. She’s in a high-pressure world aging out of the ingénue roles, dealing with heavy Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder over an event from her childhood (so she’s a cutter) and to top it all off, she becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Travis (Matt Rife), a fellow actor with severe mommy issues, and that mommy (Sheryl Lee) is a borderline psychopath. It’s a lot for a person to deal with. Martha, Travis’s mom, has decided that she is going to take control of Rose’s “situation” but Rose has too much on her mental plate and runs off, deciding to cool off in a small mountain town during a forest fire and becoming trapped in The Crown Inn—a honeymoon hotel pulled from David Lynch’s psyche. Inside, Rose goes through a fever-dream where that pile of demons manifest themselves in human form and fight each other for control. It sounds more action packed than it is; it plays out way more metaphorically. But there will be blood.
I Live Here Now is a pretty cool debut feature from Julie Pacino (yes, she is his daughter, but she has legit cred in theater and short films). Cinematically it’s gorgeous and served well on this Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. It’s a color-soaked world, art directed to the nth degree but it never comes off as “try hard”—the art serves the story and it’s all very engaging. Rose is on a journey to exorcise generations of feminine pain—it’s a feminist tale sure, but all audiences should be able to internalize her struggle. In these days, we’ve all been there and a nice analytical psychology session could probably do us some good. Along with Fry, Rife and Lee, Madeline Brewer, Lara Clear and Cara Seymour (American Psycho, The Knick) show up in great character parts.
I Live Here Now on Blu-ray presents the 16mm and 35mm-shot film (and finished in 4K) in a lovely 1.85:1 encoded at 1080/24p. Colors are bright, detail is sharp and blacks are solid and clean. This is a visually playful film, and VS serves it up very well. Sound is a duel DTS-HD Master Audio in 5.1 and 2.0 in English with optional English subs. The tracks are very dialogue friendly with atmospheric ambiance. The best extra on board is a very informative commentary track with Pacino who is eventually joined by actress/producer Lara Clear. There’s lots of good info here, especially the shout outs to the various Easter Eggs hidden throughout the film with a promise that some of those will make more sense as Pacino continues to make more films and litters her films Pixar style, with clues about other ideas she has coming up.
Additionally, extras include a lot of festival Q&As. There’s one from the U.S. premiere at Beyondfest in September 2025 at the American Cinematheque’s Los Feliz 3 Theatre in Los Angeles hosted by their film programmer Imani Davis. There’s one moderated by Ryan Murphy alum Finn Wittrock from a March 2026 screening at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, one from a February 2026 screening at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles and a COVID-era Zoom screening taken from the Utopia Screening Room with Julie Pacino and Lucy Fry moderated by Bella Thorne. There’s also a few poorly staged video interviews from the set with Sheryl Lee and Matt Rife, two trailers, a gallery of art seen in the film from Adi Spiegelman, Alee Groce and Lerotica and a featured booklet with an essay by Tori Potenza entitled Descending Into Your Underworld: Shadow Work in I Live Here Now, doing a deep dive into the Jungian influence on Pacino’s film and Rose’s journey.
For those looking to be exposed to new films and up and coming filmmakers, I Live Here Now is a good disc to pick up. If you have an opportunity, check it out. There’s a lot to download, but it’s worth the mind-f*&k.
- Todd Doogan