Instant Favorite.

An Exercise In Nonsense

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Complete waste of time. I fast forwarded at the end just to see the stupid end. Bloody, awful, meaningless piece of crap that the producers call a movie?? No wonder it has grossed $9000 only. It has no meaning, just a family killing people and their own. I don't believe I've wasted time on this sh*t. I've seen bad movies in the past, but this one tops them all.Complete waste of time. I fast forwarded at the end just to see the stupid end. Bloody, awful, meaningless piece of crap that the producers call a movie?? No wonder it has grossed $9000 only. It has no meaning, just a family killing people and their own. I don't believe I've wasted time on this sh*t. I've seen bad movies in the past, but this one tops them all.

Excellent. Well crafted. Brilliant direction. Nice people becoming sinister but you still like them.It is about a father and son released for a crime which is not made clear in the film. They return to their livelihood but are still concerned about the people close to them who incriminated them for the crime. I felt a definite sympathy for the two protagonists, especially the hippy father, changed by time and market forces, but the tale unravels a shock horror which is similar to 'Arsenic and Old Lace' with Cary Grant, without the laughs.This is not a blockbuster, thank heavens, but an artistic exploration of souls. I will buy it as a quintessential damn good film.The tale will live with you forever, as good stories do.

A strange, extremely low-budget, little film and director Ben Wheatley's first picture. After watching the slightly overrated KILL LIST and the bomb that is A FIELD IN ENGLAND, I think that his debut is also his most honest work: DOWN TERRACE is a straightforward, if complex, black comedy that explores murder carried out between friends and family.The film is essentially set in a single house and follows a father/son team who have just been released from prison. They sit around, swear a lot, and gradually begin to realise that somebody grassed them up. Unfortunately, these characters are by far the least interesting, and real-life actor/son pairing of Robert and Robin Hill is the film's biggest detraction as we're stuck with them for so long. Robert's character, in particular, is fairly pointless in the run of things, while Robin Hill just doesn't cut it as a lead.The supporting characters are a lot better, not least Michael Smiley's excellent extended cameo as the amusingly-named family man Pringle; Smiley brings an air of real menace with him, and is by far the best thing in the picture. Imagine the picture with Smiley in the lead role! Sadly, it wasn't to be. Meanwhile, Tony Way's also a lot of fun as the dim-witted Garvey, while David Schaal's tackles his stock gangster character with relish.After the slow start, it soon transpires that DOWN TERRACE is simply a film about a series of quirky deaths (I understand that Wheatley's recent movie SIGHTSEERS is much the same, so this must be a preoccupation of his). The deaths are funny, outrageous and shocking at the same time, building to a nicely grand-feeling climax despite the low budget nature of the production. This isn't a great movie and it's not really one I'd be looking at watching again, but I can safely say that Wheatley's done much, much worse!

Writer/director Ben Wheatley's debut feature film Down Terrace is British drama that fuses together the kitchen sink social realism of Shane Meadows, Ken Loach and 'The Royle Family' to make compelling yet highly uncomfortable viewing. Wheatley, who demonstrates flair for creating small moments of humour around intense menace really sets his marker down with this unsettling look into the world of a crime family in steep decline. Thanks to being mostly confined to the small rooms of your average two-up-two-down terraced house, the film has a sense of real claustrophobia which is accentuated all the more by the intensity of the drama. It's one of those films where even as people sit down to a family meal, you can sense the brewing violence in the air. The tight, confined spaces only serve to heighten the feeling of being trapped in these small rooms with psychotic characters. All the performances register strongly, the picks being Robert Hill (Bill) and Julia Deakin (Maggie), the mother and father of the house, or Godfather and Godmother. To begin with, Maggie has the demeanour of the loving, but downtrodden Mum who runs to the kitchen when the boys start arguing, but as things unfold her character develops and the performance is chillingly well measured. Anyone familiar with Wheatley's follow up film 'Kill List' will cheer when the likable Michael Smiley turns up in a similar small role. So, Down Terrace sets a strong precedent for a debut director with its realism, horror and blacker than black comedy