Down Terrace

B+

Directed by Ben Wheatley

Ben Wheatley's no-budget "Downt Terrace" is an enjoyable, though incredibly dark, look at a crime family's disintegration over the course of one week.

Thirty-four year old Karl has just beaten an undisclosed crime charge. He returns to his parent's home (where he still lives) where we are introduced to his overbearing father, unstable mother, and a host of their criminal cohorts. As Karl settles back in at home, his father informs him that he believes there is a rat amongst them and quickly sets out to "find" the rat. No one really tries to smoke out the snitch (if there even is one), however, but the members of the family rather use the excuse of finding the alleged traitor to slowly kill off their closest associates.

Some of the reviews I'd read before watching "Down Terrace" praised its witty dialogue and caustic tone which immediately fear that I'd be sitting through another pretentious piece of crap crime/comedy flick like "In Bruges". My fears were misguided, however, since "Down Terrace" is funny and absurd in all the right ways and takes itself surprisingly less seriously than it probably could considering its overall quality. The humor tends to be Monty Python-esque in the small observations, witty remarks, and ridiculous tangents characters run off on and the film ends up being a rollicking good ride if not an entirely flawless piece of film making. The comedy of errors that leads to such a high body count is often pretty funny to watch but also works well at creating suspense because you never know who is going to get waxed next and for what reason (if any!). As the bodies pile up, however, the circumstances leading to the deaths of several characters become more and more far fetched until murders seem to be happening for no reason whatsoever. The randomness of the hits is part of the point, however, since the director is trying to show how the context of finding the snitch gives everyone an excuse to whack a member of the entourage they have a problem with. Nevertheless, several peripheral characters get taken out for little reason and the events, although willfully absurd, are sometimes still too over the top.

The performances Wheatley gets from his cast of mostly amateur actors is top notch by any standards. Father and son combo of Robert and Robin Hill unsurprisingly have explosive onscreen chemistry which makes me wonder if the two weren't perhaps using the movie as a way to legitimately blow up at each other. The supporting actors are also excellent and the strength of the cast is really a credit to Wheatley who obviously knew how to get the most out of his actors.