[DVD Review (R2)] THE COTTAGE

Paul Andrew Williams made enough of an impression on me with his debut, London To Brighton (unreviewed by me) that I was prepared to seek out anything he decided to do as a follow-up with great interest. Anyone who has seen that gritty, depressing but really rather good film he made as an introduction, could have lazily labelled him as anything from “Britain’s Scorsese” right the way through to “Generation X’s Ken Loach”. They probably would NOT have thought he’d use up his ‘difficult second movie’ tag on something that would put him more in the company of Eli Roth or whoever is making throwaway horror flicks these days.

Williams’ new movie, The Cottage, takes the thematic right angle directional change made famous in Robert Rodriguez’ From Dusk Till Dawn and plays around with it as best he can on a tight budget. This is a inept criminals comedy mixed with a bog-standard slasher horror, and as an entertaining as the latter element is, it’s actually the most uninteresting aspect of Williams’ movie.

In a remote part of the countryside, a bungled kidnapping turns into a living nightmare for three desperate people - wannabe criminal David (Andy Serkis), his wimpy, hen-pecked brother Peter (Reese Shearsmith) and their foul-mouthed, fiesty captive Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) - when they cross paths with a psychopathic farmer and all hell breaks loose.

Right, there’s your plot done and dusted for you! What was initially most interesting about The Cottage was that I was kind of very guarded about the flick based on its central cast yet they worked well to win me round. I think Andy Serkais is incredibly over-rated (okay, so he can jump around in a leotard - but has anyone actually seen a ‘real’ live action performance from him that they’d shout from the roof tops about?), Reese Shearsmith is - for me - the weakest link in the cracking League of Gentlemen ensemble and Jennifer Ellison is a big-breasted no-mark who got lucky by ‘doing’ the UK lad mags with a degree of consistancy that the young male population thought “Well, we’ve wasted enough sperm on the lass, we may as well see what else she is up to!”

The thing is though that all three do really rather good work in the film’s first two thirds. There’s some well-observed laughs, some great sight gags and a huge amount of fun that comes from the interplay between the trio. Then the “mad farmer” schtick starts and it’s not that it’s particularly bad or that it derails the film it’s just that we’ve seen this sort of stuff done way too many times now and unless there’s something fresh brought to the proverbial table then there really is no point in doing it.

The latter part of The Cottage doesn’t bring anything fresh in this regard. The killer’s grotesque FX make-up is amateurish on the same level as Victor Crowley’s in the cult horror flick, Hatchet. It’s all handled well by Williams and with a quickened sense of pace so that as unoriginal and stale as it is, it spins along at a quick enough speed for it not to prove bothersome. It also leads rather well into a particular down-beat but funny final scene.

However, despite the lashings of gore and inventive kills, you’ll walk away from The Cottage having had a good time but it’s most definitely the really rather good comedic element that will linger and make an impact as opposed to the horror stuff. The slasher stuff is readily available to you in a whole host of hundreds upon thousands of better horror movies. But the gaggery on show here in the films early stages? There’s the stuff you want to give The Cottage the time of day for!

Posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 12:17 pm under DVD Reviews (R2) by Gazz.
Tags:DVD Review Region 2

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