REVIEW
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 The Cottage
2008
Certificate: 18 | Runtime: 92 | Director: Paul Andrew Williams
Starring: Andy Serkis, Reece Shearsmith, Jennifer Ellison
 
Two brothers, David (Serkis) and Peter (Shearsmith), are hiding out at a secluded cottage in the countryside after kidnapping Tracey (Ellison), the daughter of a local mobster, in order to extort some ransom money. The kidnap goes according to plan, but Tracey is far from a sweet and vulnerable young woman, and causes the brothers no end of grief. And things get more complicated when the local farmer learns of their presence. Armed with an array of sharp and lethal farming equipment, and with a decidedly psychopathic head on his shoulders, the farmer tries to rid his land of the trespassers.
As if to prove the point that all the UK Film Council does is throw money at scripts that are merely okay, The Cottage disappoints in all the ways you would expected. That's not to say that I assumed the worst, but rather that the film's problems themselves are predictable and unsurprising.
It is possible to get this horror/black comedy thing right. Recent film history is dotted with examples, not least Severance from a couple of years ago. But whereas that film had a tight script, some good scares, and a cast who understood what the film was trying to accomplish, The Cottage has precious few of these things. Williams's film finds itself lacking both laughs and scares. For starters, it relies far too heavily on the clash of personalities between the two brothers. Yes, it's funny that David is hard and Peter is a big wimp, but it's not that funny; you cannot sustain a film on amusing sibling rivalry alone. But more to the point, the film's tongue just doesn't feel wedged as tightly in its cheek as it should be. Everything about the situation the characters find themselves in is ridiculous, but the film actually seems to be playing it straight on occasion. I remember distinctly that scene in Severance where a character got his leg chopped off by a bear trap. It was gruesome, but it was somehow played for laughs at the same time. A strikingly similar thing happens to a character in The Cottage, and the comic intention is identical, but here it just seems cruel.
The performances also vary to the extent that they don't seem to belong in the same film. The contrast between David and Peter is fun for a while, but the characters are so different that you wouldn't believe two such people would talk to each other, let alone come out of the same womb. Both Serkis and Shearsmith have their moments, but they never really mesh properly. I also rather thought the complete wetness of Peter contributed to the film's unintentional seriousness. There's something quite creepy about a man who spends so, so much time screaming. Ellison shouts and swears, and swears some more. She doesn't really have to do any acting, and the constant barrage of swearing rather suggests Williams doesn't know how to construct a nasty character without it. She does have a nice rack though, so that's something. I enjoyed the performance of Steve O'Donnell as Tracey's useless half-brother. His rather clueless demeanour suited the film well.
The Cottage isn't entirely without merit. There are some gleeful examples of gore that do work as they should, and it's not like every joke falls flat. But it's never actually that much fun, which is the one thing it should have been. The funny moments are few and far between, and when it comes to the shocks and scares the film doesn't seem to know whether to wink at them or not.© David Mercier
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