Comedown (2012)

This film starts out as a British gang movie and half way through suddenly becomes a slasher film.A group of young adults agree to place a broadcasting antenna for a pirate radio broadcast (they still do that with the Internet?) on top of Mercy Point, an abandoned apartment building taken over by rats and pigeons. They also decide to party with mind altering drugs. When the expecting Jemma (Sophie Stuckey) goes missing, her boyfriend Lloyd (Jacob Anderson) leads a search party with the expected knife/ nail gun slasher film results.I watched the film not realizing the slasher aspect, which made it a surprise for me and slightly more enjoyable. The film description gives this aspect away. I liked the setting and set up, although the slasher had no personality. There appears to have been some connection between the slasher and Jemma, although that was not known or developed. Likewise, we know nothing about the slasher until the end. It seems they set this film up for a sequel which will add interesting and intriguing aspects they opted to leave out of this one.Parental Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

COMEDOWN is a low rent British horror film set entirely within the confines of a deserted tower block. The gritty realism and the setting made me hope for something along the lines of TOWER BLOCK or ATTACK THE BLOCK, but unfortunately this is nothing like those two (great) movies. Instead it's a cheap slasher, almost entirely devoid of imagination.Headlining the cast is Jacob Anderson, best known to audiences for his role as Grey Worm in GAME OF THRONES. Anderson and his buddies, including a pregnant girlfriend and an obnoxious type (Adam Deacon, playing firmly to type) hole up in a run-down building to help run a pirate radio station, but their drug-fuelled highs come crashing down when a killer starts picking them off one by one.COMEDOWN must feature one of the least menacing bad guys ever, and when you learn of his motivations you'll laugh out loud, they're that slim. The kills, which are what most horror fans will watch this for, are relatively tame, and there just isn't much in the way of suspense built along the way. It doesn't help that the dialogue is moronic throughout and that every twist in the script is well-choreographed. Add in some quite terrible cinematography, meaning 95% of this takes place in near blackness, and you have a quite unworthy film.

... Makes another deeply unpleasant film that borders on being unwatchable Yes the director of KIDULTHOOD is back and this time he tries his hand at horror in an inner London setting . This type of horror has been done before in ATTACK THE BLOCK , a film I personally despised because the anti-heroic protagonists deserved to get eaten by alien hordes . This film is no different and is a film I despise for the same reason as ATTACK THE BLOCK If you're going to have a film where the protagonists are going to be fighting for their lives at least craft some type of characterization that will have the audience empathize with their predicament . Here I didn't know anything about the villain in the background stalking the teenagers . All I knew was that he was probably doing the gene pool a massive favour Some commentators have criticised the " Estuary English / chav speak " dialogue but if we had the Royal Shakespeare Company speaking in pedantic Queens English this wouldn't have made any difference because most of the dialogue is downed out in a poor sound mix with some very dire muzak on the soundtrack just to remind the audience that this is a horror film In summary this is one of those films that will alienate and outrage everyone from the most rabidly right wing reader of The Daily Mail to the most left leaning Guardinista . When you're watching a horror film and the most likable character is the villain that must be seen as a fundamental failure

What's with the recent spate of British urban thriller movies set in and around abandoned inner city tower blocks? In 2012 we've had CITADEL, TOWER BLOCK, ATTACK THE BLOCK and now COMEDOWN.COMEDOWN is the least creatively accomplished or inventive of the trend so far. It relies on the slasher movie staple of wayward teens targeted by a serial killing maniac. They have to fight for their lives, and you just know that for most of them it's a losing battle.Audience sympathy is not enhanced by the fact that the teens in question are portrayed as a barely literate group of alcohol-swigging, drug taking hooligans with low IQs, criminal tendencies and repugnant personalities. Their nemesis is equally as unattractive, subhuman and just as unsympathetic, so there's really no one to root for. Rather than hoping for anyone to survive or prevail, I found myself wishing for them to hurry up and get killed so that the film could move more quickly towards its (foregone) conclusion.If someone has a mind to make this sort of movie, at least have the sense and common decency to attempt some level of character development and provide the audience with some individuals they have a chance of identifying with or emotionally investing in. I can't imagine even the most depraved brain-dead inner city delinquent hoodie scumbag finding anyone in this film in the least way appealing. What chance, then, have the rest of us got? It looks cheap – probably because it is – but the tower block itself is well rendered in all its decaying grotesqueness, and some of the death scenes rise just slightly above the mundane whilst still remaining largely uninspired.Finally, COMEDOWN is probably an apt title. The film feels just like one.