F Review

• 7th Jan 2011

Another film to make its premiere at last year’s FrightFest. This British effort perhaps had ample opportunity to be a tense, claustrophobic nail bitter – but finds itself getting rather lost through the mundane action, off camera kills (more like off the scene altogether) leaving it to the actors to try to rescue the film.

The premise is simple.  A troubled teacher (previously the victim of a violent attack from a student) finds himself in a bit of a no win scenario with both the school and his own family. One evening he is conducting an hour detention with his own daughter when the school comes under attack from a small gang of faceless hoodies.

This is where the film should have become as tense as any film can be. An empty school, a small cast of characters to attack. Tension should have been mounting. Instead we move from one kill to another (usually we find the aftermath of attacks than actually seeing them though). In between this is our protagonist trying to find his daughter and falling foul of various characters along his way.It all feels a bit disjointed and breaks any tension that should have been there.

The one strong redeeming aspect of this film is David Schofield. The man barely needs to wink in order to bestow his character with depth. It is also great to see him in a leading role for a change in cinema – and it is an utter shame that this film didn’t turn out to be quite what even he probably expected it to be when offered the part. On paper it must have looked great – so we can hardly blame the writing department – but we can blame the directorial effort.

The hoodies themselves work very well in that they all move in unison in a very quiet and sometimes balletic way in and out of the shadows. The fact that we see no faces, only black empty voids only adds to the mystery. It’s a shame then that their director is perhaps better suited to something more like Casualty, than actually filming casualties.

Steven Hurst