By Peter Killip.
Seeing the trailer, the “Crow-lite” promo posters and Initially put off by it starring Noel Clarke and being filmed around Shoreditch, I had my heels dug in pretty deep on this one, expecting it to fall under the broad shadow of shite cast by 2002 Joe Absalom starrer- “Long Time Dead”, thank the Lord of darkness for small mercies ……my fear of a return ticket to “Browntown” was unfounded.
Written and directed by Phillip Ridley,with 5 titles to his credit, he’s not the most prolific of souls to ever slide into the Director’s chair, I’m going to have to load up on his other stuff after seeing this. Touching on aspects of faith,family, loss,urban paranoia, loss of innocence and plenty of other weighty spoilery type stuff to dig your teeth into, it’s a mixed bag of tricks right here.
A brilliant turn from Jim Sturgess as the confused and in over his head protagonist who makes a deal while the world around him goes to hell. Some brilliant, almost heartbreaking cameos ( Timothy Spall, Eddie Marsan all but steal it for me.) give it moments where it really elevates from hackneyed horror to a pitch black drama. It loses its pacing around the 90 minute mark, doesn’t give Clemence Poesy that much to do bar some pretty weird accent work , an over reliance on jump scares and the odd telegraphed plot twist notwithstanding, has some proper gut punches in there. Even has time to go all “American Werewolf In London” at one point………..a little too effectively.
Where did I put that return ticket?
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