Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Down Terrace Blu-ray Movie Review

Black British comedy, Sopranos-style.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater January 23, 2011

Just when you thought you’d seen everything the British crime genre has to offer, along comes Down Terrace, a bleak, hilariously grisly black comedy, a potent father/son drama, and a complete slaying of mob movie conventions, all at once. It’s a character study of some seriously screwed up characters, an intimate film about people with which you’d never want to be intimate, and a portrait of a family whose dysfunctions are the steam in their pressure cooker of a disheveled two-story house. Adding to the oddity is the fact that the movie stars members of an actual family and was shot—over only eight days—in their cluttered, book-strewn Brighton home. Couple this with a well-written, incredibly specific script, and it’s a perfect example of a low-budget film making the most of its limited resources.

Karl and Bill

We’re thrown headlong into the world of Down Terrace with little introduction or explanation, and this is one of the film’s greatest pleasures—it gives information to us one small piece at a time, letting us work at putting the complete picture together in our minds, rather than relying on artless exposition. We meet Bill and Karl—real life father and son Robert and Robin Hill—as they’re returning from court, having narrowly escaped a jail sentence for some unidentified crime. We eventually figure out that they’re essentially mid-level drug dealers, and that pushing is the multi- generational family trade. Bill is an aging, vaguely Timothy Leary-ish hippy who fancies himself as a folk singer, fasts annually for the entirety of January—“I feel like a teenaged tantric superman,” he exclaims—and laments, at length, about how drug culture, once intent on expanding cosmic consciousness, is now the province of idiots looking to get a superficial high. He’s a tough-as-nails patriarch, a manipulative S.O.B. who exerts total authority. Understandably, his son, raised from birth to be a lackey, is caught in a state of perpetual arrested development. Karl, at 34, dresses like a junior high dweeb and still lives at home, where he’s henpecked by his chilly mother (Julia Deakin) and erupts frequently into adolescent temper tantrums. We get the sense that, under his father’s looming shadow, he’s never been able to make any decisions—let alone a life—on his own.

The script, co-written by Robin Hill and debut director Ben Wheatley—longtime collaborators in British television—makes deftly subtle use of family psychology to power the machinery of the film’s plot. I don’t want to give too much away, as Down Terrace’s cinematic success is predicated on its ability to constantly re-shock its audience with ghastly twists, but let’s just say that things go deadly wrong when the family suffers a series of miscommunications while trying to rout out a possible police informant in their midst. Could it be Garvey (Tony Way), the slovenly club owner who’s always shoving cake into his mouth? Might it be piggish thug Eric (The Inbetweeners’ David Schaal), who arrives in the first act toting Chekhov’s proverbial gun in his coat pocket? What of wild-eyed Chris Pringle (Michael Smiley), the wily assassin who brings his three-year-old son along on murder assignments? Perhaps it’s even Valda (Kerry Peacock), Karl’s erstwhile girlfriend, who shows up out of the blue to inform him that she’s pregnant with what she claims is his baby. This particular turn of events sparks a change in Karl, who becomes determined to finally take charge of his own destiny, but bungles it up in the most horrendous way imaginable.

Like many crime movies, there’s an air of mismatched Shakespearean tragedy here—with Karl as Hamlet, and his mother as Lady Macbeth—but the loftier, high-drama elements of the script are grounded by handheld, verité camerawork, placing the grim proceedings in a more realistic mode. The most common critical description of the film’s tone has been “The Sopranos meets Mike Leigh,” and that’s at least a good starting point for describing Down Terrace’s blend of comedy, pathos, and criminal unease. Wheatley keeps the audience off-kilter for much of the film; his camera drifts through the hallways and cramped rooms of the family’s unkempt home to queasy effect, keeping us on edge, aware that some outburst of anger or violence is always imminent. And it usually is. The second act is ushered in with a series of brutal and unexpected murders—the film makes ample use of blunt objects, knives, and plastic sheeting—but there’s a vein of dry, coal-black humor running throughout, resulting in some deliciously uncomfortable laughs. Perhaps my favorite moment in the film is when Bill, curious how Chris Pringle’s gun-for-hire business is going, asks, “Do you have a web presence?” And it only gets more bizarre, from little old ladies getting pushed in front of buses to an asthmatic hit man who has the tables turned on him when he stops in the middle of a stabbing to take a puff on his inhaler. Bucking the trend of British gangster movies using stock stereotypes, each of Down Terrace’s flawed characters is a dimensional being, and their interactions compellingly suggest backstories to which we’ll never be privy. For me, it’s always a mark of a good film when I can envision—and enjoy envisioning—the characters at other stages in their lives. I don’t necessarily need to see a prequel about Bill’s days as a young stoner in the ‘60s, coping with the birth of his son, for instance, but the fact that the film suggests all of this history is a strong indicator of the quality and thoughtfulness of the writing.

Down Terrace Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Even visually, Down Terrace proves you can do a lot with a low budget and a single location, as the film's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer—framed in a slim 2.35:1 aspect ratio—is pleasingly bleak and stylized. Shot on high definition video, on location, with what looks to be a minimum of supplementary lighting, Down Terrace certainly has its share of visual quirks—some overexposure in the highlights, pasty skin tones, and slightly washed out colors—but I feel like these actually work to the film's favor, heightening the narrative's off-kilter, almost surreal quality. The image may not stand up, objectively, to the best, most demo-worthy Blu-ray showpieces, but taken on its own terms, the picture is certainly strong. Clarity is actually quite refined in most shots—see the detail in the screengrab of a dry piece of cake—although the combination of hand-held camerawork and shallow depth of field means that focus isn't always where you'd expect it to be. Color is cold and lightly desaturated, black levels are sufficiently deep, and contrast is adequate. If you can overlook the issues inherent in the way the film was shot, you should have no problems with Down Terrace on Blu-ray.

Down Terrace Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Set almost entirely in a single two-story home, you shouldn't expect any bombastic action-movie theatrics from Down Terrace's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. Rather, the mix is restrained and realistic, putting airy household ambience and occasional out-of-view sound effects in the rear channels while forefronting the dialogue that essentially drives the film. When we do rarely venture out into Brighton, you'll hear the hush of wind and birds and other outdoor atmospheric sounds spread throughout the soundscape. It's all kept very quiet and minimal, but this makes the odd loud sound effects—an expected gunshot, for instance—all the more jarring. Vocals are clean and clear throughout—although you may need subtitles to understand some of the more esoteric British slang—and the occasional use of incidental music, mostly old folk and blues tunes, fills out the remainder of the mix. No problems here! English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available in easy-to-read white lettering.

Down Terrace Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Ben Wheatley (Co-Writer/Director) and Robin Hill (Co-Writer/Editor/"Karl"): A funny and insightful commentary from the two collaborators, who discuss just about everything you'd want to know about the making of the film.
• Acting Screen Test: Bob Hill and Robin Hill (SD, 00:57): A brief screen test of the two Hills rehearsing a scene.
• Like Father Like Son Camera Tests (SD, 4:04): Rehearsal of an additional scene.
• Extended Scene: Bill Talks about the '60s (SD, 9:49): A much longer version of the scene where Bill talks about how great things were in the hippy '60s.
• Deleted Scene: Bill and the Toad (SD, 4:55): During the middle of a shooting day, Bob Hill found a toad in the garden and tried to improvise a scene about it. Pretty funny, actually.
• Tricks of the Amazing Wizards!!! (SD, 7:57): Ben Wheatley and Robin Hill are also a comedy duo known as The Amazing Wizards who do low-budget special effects-based humor. Here you'll find a few of their short viral videos, which usually involve Robin getting horribly injured. Good stuff.
• Down Terrace Teaster/Festival Trailer (SD, 1:23)
• "Rob Loves Kerry" Short Film (SD, 9:43): A short film that Wheatley and Hill shot before Down Terrace.

Down Terrace Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of the strangest, most original crime dramas I've seen in recent memory, Down Terrace may be too idiosyncratic for some mainstream audiences, but it'll definitely be enjoyed by fans of black British comedies like Withnail & I or last year's In the Loop. Recommended!