ThiefHott Too much of everything

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

soranamicooper What a family! These are not your glam gangsters - seedy, paranoid; gotta keep it low-key - don't repaint the living room - too ostentatious. Low budget; no wastage; tight dialogue; well acted; some good sounds to boot from old hippy Dad and co. The humour's well black and the characters well credible (I'm sure they live just up the road). I loved them all, the conniving and the hilarious bodge jobs. It gets a bit out of hand (read that with whatever intonation you want). It's an absolute hoot and a little diamond of a film that'll survive repeat viewings.

eloy_lb Complete waste of time. I fast forwarded at the end just to see the stupid end. Bloody, awful, meaningless piece of crap that the producers call a movie?? No wonder it has grossed $9000 only. It has no meaning, just a family killing people and their own. I don't believe I've wasted time on this sh*t. I've seen bad movies in the past, but this one tops them all.Complete waste of time. I fast forwarded at the end just to see the stupid end. Bloody, awful, meaningless piece of crap that the producers call a movie?? No wonder it has grossed $9000 only. It has no meaning, just a family killing people and their own. I don't believe I've wasted time on this sh*t. I've seen bad movies in the past, but this one tops them all.

Leofwine_draca A strange, extremely low-budget, little film and director Ben Wheatley's first picture. After watching the slightly overrated KILL LIST and the bomb that is A FIELD IN ENGLAND, I think that his debut is also his most honest work: DOWN TERRACE is a straightforward, if complex, black comedy that explores murder carried out between friends and family.The film is essentially set in a single house and follows a father/son team who have just been released from prison. They sit around, swear a lot, and gradually begin to realise that somebody grassed them up. Unfortunately, these characters are by far the least interesting, and real-life actor/son pairing of Robert and Robin Hill is the film's biggest detraction as we're stuck with them for so long. Robert's character, in particular, is fairly pointless in the run of things, while Robin Hill just doesn't cut it as a lead.The supporting characters are a lot better, not least Michael Smiley's excellent extended cameo as the amusingly-named family man Pringle; Smiley brings an air of real menace with him, and is by far the best thing in the picture. Imagine the picture with Smiley in the lead role! Sadly, it wasn't to be. Meanwhile, Tony Way's also a lot of fun as the dim-witted Garvey, while David Schaal's tackles his stock gangster character with relish.After the slow start, it soon transpires that DOWN TERRACE is simply a film about a series of quirky deaths (I understand that Wheatley's recent movie SIGHTSEERS is much the same, so this must be a preoccupation of his). The deaths are funny, outrageous and shocking at the same time, building to a nicely grand-feeling climax despite the low budget nature of the production. This isn't a great movie and it's not really one I'd be looking at watching again, but I can safely say that Wheatley's done much, much worse!

justincward I really enjoyed the microbudget Down Terrace - it's the story of a Brighton (English seaside town) gangster family in the style of The Sopranos, where suburban gang soldiers can expect no mercy from anyone, even in the middle of a bowl of muesli. In the end they're all in various degrees of psychosis - the logical conclusion being that the characters have to kill or be killed. And kill they do, getting through miles of polythene sheeting in the process.The plot, such as it is, is that the family who run the crime ring (which we never really learn about) suspect that they've got an informer, and over two weeks the operation falls apart bigtime as the paranoia escalates.It's carried on in a Mike Leigh impro style, and some of the acting and dialogue might have done with a bit more direction and editing, but that must be a consequence of the small budget. The unfamiliar cast get right under the skins of their characters - I used to know exactly the sort of hippy drug dealer that would have turned into Bill, the folk-and-blues singing father who thinks he's Chinese philosopher (Art of War) Sun Tzu.Down Terrace is surely best watched on a small screen. On the big screen the claustrophobia of the small terraced house would be overpowering, and in order to tolerate this tale of family dysfunction, wholesale murder and psychosis you need to be able to detect the black, black humour running through it.There are some great touches throughout, if you watch it without trying to make too much sense of the plot; it's the sort of film that inspires you to make your own low budget thriler, and that can't be bad.