There aren't any movie stars in Down Terrace (2010). The criminals in this film look like people you might see on a trip to bowling alley -- they're greyish, overweight, and lumpy. The movie shows them in their natural habitat -- a claustrophobic set of rooms in a small middle-class home somewhere near England. The film is casual, understated, and observes its nondescript characters in a documentary style. The violence that occurs in this film is effective because it arises without any hint of melodrama or, even, suspense -- it's just a logical extension of the way these small-time hoodlums interact.
Something has gone wrong in a crime family. Bill and Maggie's 33-year old son, Karl, has just been discharged from court. With a family fixer (and, possibly, lawyer) named Dave, Karl comes home. It's not entirely clear why he was in jail -- possibly it has something to do with his bad temper. But there is a pervasive, ill-defined suspicion that the criminal enterprise (it has something to do with a club apparently in London) is under attack on the basis of someone collaborating with law enforcement. An overweight dumpling of a man named Garvey is under some suspicion -- but this may be simply because everyone bullies poor, ineffectual Garvey. Bill presides over the family and the thugs affiliated with the business -- these include the fixer Dave, a psycho-killer named Pringle (he comes to a murder-for-hire event with his two-year old son whom he is babysitting), Garvey, Erik, another jolly fat criminal associated with the family (he's Maggie's sister), and an enforcer from the mob named Jonny. At first, the film details domestic squabbles in the family: Bill pontificates on various subjects -- he talks about how he was an admirer of Timothy Leary -- and persistently abuses his son Karl about his pregnant girlfiend, Valda, a woman who Karl met when he became his penpal when he was in jail. Bill says that the child that Valda is carrying is most likely not Karl's. There's a lot of bickering between Karl and his overbearing father, Bill, and everyone picks on poor Garvey. Bill's long-suffering wife is a vague presence in the background, who retreats from controversy by going to bed early. (Later, we will come to understand that Maggie is, in some ways, the brains of the entire operation and that her retiring demeanor masks her utter ruthlessness.) Bill is under pressure to root out the police informant in his circle. Suspicion falls on Garvey but Bill believes the fat man is too ineffectual to be the snitch. Nonetheless, Karl calls up the psycho Pringle, whom everyone fears, and has him come over to the house to kill Garvey. Pringle is babysitting and brings his two-year-old, a child whom Pringle is teaching to be an eye-gouging street fighter. Garvey senses he's in trouble and locks himself in a room, refusing to come out while Pringle is menacing him. Pringle goes home and, after he leaves, Garvey, who trusts his friend, Karl comes out of his hiding place -- Karl immediately kills him with a hammer. (These murderers hang clear plastic to keep blood from spattering -- when we see the plastic on the walls or furniture, we know someone is about to be killed.) With his friend, and uncle Eric, Karl buries the body of Garvey. Pringle, of course, was commissioned to kill Garvey, although he failed at this task. But he's aware that Karl had Garvey killed. So Eric takes Pringle out in the country to see a car for sale and guns him down. A little later, when Eric encounters Pringle's wife, pushing a perambulator, he chats with her a cheerful manner before hurling her directly into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Jonny from London threatens Bill, saying that the boss wants the snitch uncovered. Bill now thinks that Eric might be the weak link. So Maggie poisons her brother to death. Having to dispose of Eric's corpse, Maggie says: "All I ever have to do is clean up after these bloody men." She also makes the sinister remark that "if you (Eric) weren't part of the family this would never have happened." Bill and Maggie keep attempting to persuade Karl to abandon his pregnant girlfriend Valda. Dave, the fixer, has a heart attack. On his deathbed, he tells Karl that Eric's corpse has been found (Eric was a close friend) and that Bill and Maggie are conspiring to have him killed since the mob now thinks he's the informer. While walking through a tunnel, a hoodlum tries to stab Karl to death; Karl gets the upper hand and kills the hoodlum with his own knife. Maggie and Valda go for a walk. The viewer expects the ruthless Maggie to murder Valda. Instead, Valda kills Maggie by stabbing her to death, again against a backdrop of clear plastic. ("What is all this plastic for?" Maggie plaintively asks just before the pregnant Valda guts her. At home, Kar. shoots his father, Bill, and, then, carefully wraps the corpse in duct-taped plastic. Valda comes to the house and nonchalantly asks Karl: "How'd it go?" Bill is a mummy wrapped up in plastic propped up against the wall. "Not too bad," Kirk says, "he knew he had it coming and accepted it as the best thing for him."
This is a dirty-looking, kitchen sink picture full of low-grade domestic squabbles -- the bickering cast reminds me of some of the lower-crust people in films by Kira Muratova, also whinging at one another, cuffing and punching, and making threats. But, then, suddenly, people start getting assassinated -- this is very shocking and disorienting. The film's tone is that of a black comedy. The thugs are musical and there are interludes in which they play guitar and sing old, sad, folksongs, also about reckless love and murder. Bill and his cohort talk in florid, eloquent language -- they sound like people in an old-time novel. This is an utterly unpretentious picture -- it has the look of Mike Leigh's domestic dramas and seems partly improvised as well.
The film is ugly, made with no budget to speak of, and seems fantastically realistic and authentic. Ben Wheatley wrote the script with a mate and directed it. Wheatley shot the picture in 8 days. It's probably his best film, although he has made several other movies that have received some critical attention -- notably Kill List and A Field in England. Recently, Wheatley, who physically looks like the ne-er-do-wells in Down Terrace, has been making big-budget pictures about giant sharks that haven't been successful.
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