Arguably the sickest, most extreme movie to ever bear the “BBC Films” logo, this also happens to be one of the outstanding British horror films of the past decade – an unrelentingly grim descent into a Hell-based sitcom that marks a stunning directorial debut for former cinematographer Steven Sheil. Shot for £100k and playing out as an unflinching variant on downbeat, grimy family-based British exploitation flicks like MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY and FRIGHTMARE, it unfolds, to great effect, against a deliberately jarring soundtrack – in the absence of conventional scoring, this movie’s discordant sound design is dominated by the abrasive airport sounds Sheil grew up with.
Downtrodden lowly Heathrow terminal cleaner Olga Fedori misses her lift at the end of a night shift and winds up taking refuge at the house of her unfailingly chirpy co-worker (Ainsley Howard). It doesn’t take long for Fedori to realize that Howard and her deranged parents, known only as Mum (Dido Miles) and Dad (Perry Benson) have a penchant for abducting immigrants and subjecting them to a grueling prolonged ordeal until they have become integrated into the family unit.
While there are (too) many American-made variations on the TEXAS CHAINSAW freaky family / survivalist horror theme, a British perspective on the same has been largely non-existent since the 70‘s. This movie, which has a very CHAINSAW-inspired conclusion involving the shattered, seriously wounded yet defiant final girl, has as one of its key strengths the fact that it offers a disarmingly British take on a familiar, American dominated sub-genre of horror.
It culminates, to marvelously cringe-inducing effect, with a nightmare version of the typical British Christmas Day : a simultaneously hilarious and distressing festive set piece comes complete with an imitation of Slade’s “It’s Christmas!” cry, over-loud chintzy festive music, crap presents, Mum & Dad drunk on Sherry and typically garish decorations (you know, the usual stuff, like a tinsel-laden, barely alive guest nailed to the wall).
This boldly intense and unpleasant U.K. take on ordeal horror also outdoes its Stateside peers by crafting an unforgettably warped family unit. Benson’s Dad looks a fairly innocuous beer bellied, bespectacled John Goodman type but vividly conveys the soul of a callous, brutal lech. He also figures in what may be cinema history’s most disgusting masturbation moments, involving a slab of bloody, unidentifiable meat…and no we don’t mean his cock. Miles does equally unsettling work as an outwardly warm maternal figure easily tipped over into pure psycho territory, while Howard’s turn as the deceptively cheery but dangerously insane “Birdie” may be the most disturbing of the lot. Rounding out this fucked up family are a silent, retarded porn-enthusiast son and (perhaps the grimmest element) a secret, drooling spastic child hidden away on the top floor.
The movie apes CHAINSAW with its upsetting dinner table torments and harrowing scenes of physical torture, and, unlike a lot of Tobe Hooper imitators, actually succeeds in duplicating that film’s sustained intensity and blacker-than-black humor. In perhaps the nicest touch, Sheil cannily twists our sympathies near the end so that we don’t feel like cheering even when our heroine finally strikes back in a frenzied fashion against the sickos who have spent 80 minutes brutalizing her. Somehow, seeing the perky Howard being snuffed out turns out to not be as much fun as it would initially seem.
In a movie where the close-up sight of Perry Benson’s flabby naked ass isn’t even the ugliest thing on display, Fedori – in a mostly silent role as the young woman plunged into a uniquely warped domestic nightmare – is remarkably convincing.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
