DVD review: The Cottage

Writer-director Paul Andrew Williams gained well-deserved praise for his debut, London to Brighton, a tense, scary realistic drama which picked up six awards. The Cottage, also written by the director, switches gear to comedy horror, again in a sleazy, low-rent world. For the first half-hour or so, it's an enjoyable criminal folly, where you are encouraged to laugh at the ineptitude of the would-be crims, in this case Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith, debut kidnappers. Initially, it's well-scripted and performed, though you can't help thinking a dumb and dumber pair is a bit too much once Steven O'Donnell turns up as an even more unlikely potential villain. The film then proceeds in the direction of a local yokels' Texas Chain Saw Massacre-type gorefest, complete with deformed farmer. The script is largely limited to "Aaargh"s latterly and the proceedings become gory without being either funny or scary. Having Shearsmith in the action only serves as a reminder that this sort of thing isn't as easy as it looks — he was in Shaun of the Dead as well as the League of Gents, both of which carried off the blend of macabre and comic with expert timing. The amount of gore and the potty mouth of belligerent kidnap victim Jennifer Ellison ensure an 18 certificate for a piece whose natural constituency would be a Saturday night teen slasher one, thus slashing its potential audience and, with a couple of Korean hitmen turning up to no particular purpose, there are hints that the finished work might have been slashed about a bit, too.