Down Ter­race

MON­DAY. TUES­DAY. The events of Down Ter­race are reg­u­lar­ly punc­tu­at­ed by inter­ti­tles stat­ing in bold cap­i­tals which day of the week it is. These fit in per­fect­ly with the film’s quo­tid­i­an con­cerns, as a family’s kitchen sink dra­mas are played out in a Brighton ter­race house mea­sured in cups of tea, talk of DIY repairs, and occa­sion­al vis­its from friends and associates.

Any­one who has seen The Shin­ing knows that such tit­u­lar time-mark­ers can also serve as a sig­ni­fi­er of approach­ing (and under­ly­ing) hor­rors – and so it is that this sit-com set-up will soon be accom­mo­dat­ing vio­lence, betray­al and cold-blood­ed murder.

Bill (Robert Hill), Mag­gie (Julia Deakin) and their 34-year-old son Karl (Robert’s real son Robin Hill, who also co-wrote and edit­ed) may seem like an ordi­nary fam­i­ly, but that is only because, as Bill puts it, they ​‘can’t be too con­spic­u­ous.’ Bill, you see, heads the local chap­ter of a crime syn­di­cate. But someone’s been talk­ing to the police, so Bill, with his wife as chief advi­sor and occa­sion­al enforcer, sets about iden­ti­fy­ing and elim­i­nat­ing the infor­mant in their ranks.

Mean­while, Karl – engaged to Val­da (Ker­ry Pea­cock) and soon to be a father him­self – wants out, but the blood in this fam­i­ly runs very thick, and as Karl unearths some well-hid­den home truths, he looks set to con­tin­ue the very lega­cy that he longs to sever.

From The God­fa­ther to The Sopra­nos, crime and fam­i­ly have long made com­pelling bed­fel­lows, but in his low-bud­get fea­ture debut, Ben Wheat­ley brings a very Eng­lish work­ing-class brand of domes­tic banal­i­ty to his evil, doing for the gang­ster flick what Steven Sheil’s Mum & Dad did for sur­vival hor­ror. It is a tragedy, but also very fun­ny, shock­ing and also utter­ly mun­dane –though the seething ten­sions are always pal­pa­ble even if the vio­lence is large­ly kept out of the frame. Isn’t that how it is with most close-knit clans?

A British crime film that is refresh­ing­ly free not just of cliché but (broad­ly) of action itself, Down Ter­race offers an ensem­ble of believ­ably con­tra­dic­to­ry char­ac­ters divid­ed between their com­mit­ments to work and fam­i­ly, and then observes from its dark­ly com­ic dis­tance as they all try to kill one anoth­er – in the fam­i­ly way.