How I Live Now

I love this book. It is uplifting and although there is a war going on, you are sheltered from seeing any of the violence. The main character overcomes an eating disorder and creates a family in the midst of war. She grows as a person and learns about life. The movie is a very dark and gory portrayal of the horrors of war. It starts out like the book, but it takes a sharp turn after the bomb drops. I love the movie, too- it is a brilliant movie. But, don't let your teenagers who love the book watch this movie. The second half of the movie contains many disturbing/triggering scenes. Scenes of violence include: -The military picking the kids up from the farm starts with them shooting up the barn, waking the kids and nearly killing them all. -Girls see dead bodies in crashed cars on side of road. -Girls are forced into a work camp and the strong implication is made that they are working any child old enough to walk and all adult women to far past their limits and that everyone at this camp is now a slave to the military-run government. The women and children are acting afraid, hungry, ill, and some have obviously been beaten. -The girls find their neighbor, a young boy, who is beaten, is drinking from a flask, and who proceeds to get shot in the head- blood splatter gets all over Daisy's face and she turns to watch the boy crawling, blood and tissue running down his blown-out skull, slowly dying. They flee. -Upon escaping, the houses are being bombed and you can hear people screaming and crying. -They come upon a plane wreck. This includes a small child's shoe and a dead teenager with a very realistic broken and twisted body hanging in a tree. -There is a dead bird rotting in the water, I guess just to add more gore? -They come upon where the boys were supposed to be held, and there are all the boys from that farm in a pile of dead bodies. They are bound, wrists and feet, with rope and their faces are covered in plastic bags. They appear to have all been shot. There are foxes eating the bodies. Daisy has to unwrap each of the heads to confirm that none are her cousins. It does not cut away from showing several heads being unwrapped, some in worse condition than others, until she finds the head of one of her cousins. She takes his bloody glasses, quickly looks at the rest of the corpses, and then pukes bile. -They are woken by a band of para-military guys who have several women in various states of undress, being tied up, and having obviously all been beaten. The women are sobbing, wailing, crying, and begging for mercy. They are obviously being raped and kept by these guys. This is where two of them throw down a woman right next to a hiding Daisy and turn to pee on a tree. The woman sees Daisy and begs for help. Daisy has no choice but to run as the guys pick the woman back up and start beating her again as she tries to fight them off of her. - later, two guys confront her and Piper, and she shoots them both. One is left wailing on the forest floor, shot in the stomach. - Upon returning home, (finally), they see that the military had been using the farmhouse. there is a mattress soaked in blood, maggots all over the kitchen, and signs of vagrants living in the upstairs (drug and alcohol paraphernalia). -They find Edmond, the other brother, very badly beaten. He will not talk. Apparently no end to the war is in site and all their parents are dead and the three of them are left to live off food rations delivered and their farming skills. Oh... and there is a very graphic sex scene (that gets replayed over the course of the movie) between Daisy and Edmond (who slowly fall in love in the book, but decide that they are in love over the course of a few days in the movie although they have never had a conversation). Yes, they are cousins. Step-cousins, if that makes you feel better. Additional triggers are that Daisy has an eating disorder and OCD. She has a lot of distorted thoughts that you hear going around and around in her head about her weight and you see her food avoidance behaviors. This is a brilliant film. It is not for Young Adults and if you have problems with being disturbed by sexual violence, dead children's bodies, or bombs/war, I will warn you that these scenes are gritty, realistic, gory, and disturbing. I'd say that it is on-par with American History X on its level of disturbing-ness.

I'm thirteen years old, and of course, being 13, I was browsing Netflix for a dystopian movie. I first found "The Host," which is now my favorite movie. I loved the actress, Saoirse Ronan, and searched for other movies of hers. When I found this one, I watched it without reading the rating. I would only recommend this to anyone above the age of 13, and if you are my age, then you sure better be a hell load mature. There was plenty of uses of "f**k" by the protagonist, Daisy, and a sex scene with her cousin. (which doesn't show too much, as I have only seen two sex scenes, in my life, and let me say, the Notebook was way worse). Uses of the word "d**k" and "s**t" are common too. Violence- bullet wounds can be seen in characters heads, especially two 14 year olds. There is a war going on so obviously there is going to be plenty of violence. Trigger warning- main character has an eating disorder. Though it may not be very obvious, as I barely realized the first time I watched it, it is still there.