I really liked the idea of a horror movie set in East London - where, coincidentally, I live. Seeing Jim Sturgess' character Jamie mooching around streets that I walk on my way to work was a lot of fun.
And Philip Ridley attempts to do something different with the genre, trying to mix supernatural and social conscience. It kind of almost works, but like so many movies in this subject-space, it all goes a bit to hell-in-a-handbasket in the final reel.
For me the ending is too much of a cop-out. I was hoping Ridley was going to come up with a better solution to the story than what we got. Very disappointing for the "demons" to be just hoodie, ASBO thugs after all. So I was left thinking that Papa B and Belle were just figments of Jamie's imagination. Now maybe that wasn't what Ridley was trying to put over, but that was what I was getting.
What we're left with is a Scooby-Doo type story, where the demons of Bethnal Green just turned out to be "old man Clanton, the creepy caretaker in a mask."
And, Philip, you'd have gotten away with it, to, if it hadn't been (etc, etc) ...
And Philip Ridley attempts to do something different with the genre, trying to mix supernatural and social conscience. It kind of almost works, but like so many movies in this subject-space, it all goes a bit to hell-in-a-handbasket in the final reel.
For me the ending is too much of a cop-out. I was hoping Ridley was going to come up with a better solution to the story than what we got. Very disappointing for the "demons" to be just hoodie, ASBO thugs after all. So I was left thinking that Papa B and Belle were just figments of Jamie's imagination. Now maybe that wasn't what Ridley was trying to put over, but that was what I was getting.
What we're left with is a Scooby-Doo type story, where the demons of Bethnal Green just turned out to be "old man Clanton, the creepy caretaker in a mask."
And, Philip, you'd have gotten away with it, to, if it hadn't been (etc, etc) ...