Prevenge - novel, gory, comic, brilliant

Catching up with my Lovefilm DVDs recently left me in possession of a rather odd film I couldn't remember adding to my list.  Prevenge comes with a synopsis that should have most people rolling their eyes: Ruth is a heavily pregnant woman who's unborn baby is telling her to kill people.  Gotta love High Concept.

Rather than being simply an excuse for B-movie gore, Prevenge is surprisingly satirical, while being every bit as darkly comic as you would hope.  Amongst the people Ruth murders are a pet shop owner, fitness fanatic, two potential flatmates and DJ Dan - the most disgusting excuse for a man to ever have lived.  Dan acts in just about the most outrageously sexist, childish and vomit-inducing way around Ruth as she pulls him in the shit bar where he's plying his trade.  The audience is encouraged to have little sympathy over his murder as he shouts at his elderly mum in his flat while throwing up into his wig.  Yup - that.

Therein lies much of Prevenge's satire and appeal - what woman hasn't endured horrible sexist 'banter' in a bar and wished they could stick the boot in (ok well Ruth uses a knife - but metaphors innit)?  When women get pregnant they change right?  We are told a mystical connection is formed between mother and baby right?  Well who says that has to be loving and caring - maybe the baby is the next Charles Manson in wating?!

The one person Ruth can't quite seem to kill is the person intrinsically linked to the implied reason for her homicidal rampage, and the reason the father of the baby isn't around.  The story-line veers wonderfully close to the heartwarming towards the end, as Ruth comes to see how her pregnancy is impacting her mental health.  However the film cannot quite bring itself to shift the focus back into the real world (we assume that in the real world Ruth would have been caught many months ago - such is her disregard for covering up her tracks), preferring instead to remain in the bafflingly surreal world of Ruth's actions.  It's a difficult story to wrap up after all, and by letting this bonkers world hang around until the final shot I think the writers did it extraordinarily well.

Alice Lowe stars as Ruth.  She was outstanding in Sightseers, but here she is also the writer and director.  The film was apparently shot in on a short timescale on a tight budget, a triumph for Lowe who's work I will be looking out for the in future.  I fully endorse Prevenge.  It has a tight and engaging script, and is comic, dark and satirical in all the right amounts.  It's exactly what you want to discover when you watch a small budget film from an unknown writer / director.  Go and see it.

The Inbetweeners - it's all great, apart from the second film

The second movie based on the cult TV classic The Inbetweeners was available on All 4 over last weekend, as such me and my girlfriend in our hungover states settled down to a very weird double bill - the first of which was David Lynch's much-lauded Mulholland Drive.  Quite a double bill indeed.

The Inbetweeners is a cult classic for good reason.  It hit the popular zeitgeist back in the mid 2000s when it attained popularity for its cringingly realistic portrayal of teenage boys and their disgusting foul mouths, foul minds and even fouler behaviour.  Nothing was considered taboo.  The show even invented its own swear word that somehow manages to be even more wince-inducing than any actual profanity.

Of course any successful TV show needs a film, and so it was that in 2011 the original writers of the show penned a feature length episode in which the lads go wild on a classic 'lads on tour' holiday to a Mediterranean island.  The second film followed in 2014, this time in Australia.

The transition from small screen to large is hard to pull off, and where the first film managed it quite well the second struggles hugely.  The point is that you need to have a story to tell, and your characters have to go on a journey.  In 25 minutes of television you can restrict yourself to a short gribly tale of teenage poo and vomit.  However to sit through 90 minutes you need a lot more.  The first movie manages this by having its characters come of age.  They spend their time being themselves and carrying on as they always have, but each end up with the girl they didn't originally lust over, learning along the way that sex and relationships in real life are a million miles from the screwed up fantasy land of their hitherto teenage experiences.  It's called an arc innit.

The second film doesn't seem to even attempt to tick this box of script-writing 101.  Instead we head off to Australia and have crude visual gags about poo and nobs and pissing.  Then each of our characters ends up in the same place as they started at the first film.  The funniest part of the film is a series of digs at fake new-age traveller types who have gone abroad to 'find themselves', but are in fact on a gap year paid for by wealthy parents in Surrey.  Aside from that, the poo-gags you can either take or leave.

It's a classic tale: popular TV series goes on to the big screen to make some money and fucks it up.  Just so happens that in the case of The Inbetweeners got the first film right, and so we had to wait for the second one before they fell back on toilet humour and forgot to tell a story.  The appeal of The Inbetweeners is fairly universal, my Dad enjoyed it when I showed it to him and as far as I can tell there are people between the ages of 20 and 30 who cannot watch it as it's too cringingly close to the realities of their teenage years.  It is a genuinely funny cult classic of its era that I would recommend to anyone who can abide the relentless smut.  Just don't bother watching the second film.