Movie Review: The Cottage

Paul Andrew Williams made quite a splash on the independent film scene with his 2006 low-budget drama London to Brighton – a gritty and naturalistic thriller that won audience and critic plaudits aplenty.

With his follow up, Williams decided to go back and revisit an earlier project that pre-dated London to Brighton, and so now, in 2008, we have The Cottage, a splat-tick comedy that fuses broad comedic farce with gory horror thrills.

Fusing comedy and horror is a tricky proposition and has been attempted with varying degrees of success over the last few years. Shaun of the Dead pretty much set the bar, while Severance did little more than prove there are few things in life more annoying than mockney irritant Danny Dyer.

The Cottage goes for a game of two halves approach, which reminds me of Tarantino and Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn. The first half is crime thriller meets broad sitcom as a couple of bungling criminal brothers kidnap the foul-mouthed daughter of a crime boss and hole up in the titular cottage, while the second half descends into gory farce as our heroes are hunted and dispatched by a hideously deformed serial murderer.

The comedic first half is what lets the film down – the excellent Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith are limited to a series of over the top pantomime pratfalls that simply aren't that funny, and you're left wondering when the film's going to knock itself into second gear for much of the first half.

It's the second half that works much better as limbs are lopped off, farm implements are put to inappropriate use, and the biggest cheer of the 90 minutes comes as Brookside loud-mouth Jennifer Ellison gets a shovel through her annoying face. Williams shows genuine flair for raising the required tension, while the laughs work much better when restricted to people having extreme pain inflicted upon them... in amusing ways of course.

The Cottage will be accused of being a backwards step by snooty critics who praised Williams as the new Mike Leigh or Alan Clarke a couple of years ago, and the film does feel more like a flawed debut than an assured second movie, but Williams should be applauded for at least defying expectations and trying someting different.

Despite one of the worst titles of the year – look out for sequels The Shed, The Semi-Detached and The Bungalow – The Cottage manages to be a whole lot of fun once it hits its stride and is a worthy entrant to the splatter comedy genre.