K-Shop

This film was a lot smarter than you would think. Not a typical slasher film at all. It carries important messages about drinking culture, moral depravity, and human nature. For a low budget feature, the special effects and make up were incredibly realistic. Very impressive. The mood is very gritty and it feels like it takes you to a dark intoxicated psychotic underworld, which remains with you even after watching the film. The casting is superb and the talent is great. In particular, the lead role is fantastically played - you wouldn't think he was such a newcomer. I would love to see the director and main actor work together again

I had no idea what type of film this was before I watched it, but I am now a fan of everyone involved with this picture. I often wonder what it would be like if someone took it upon himself to purge the world of awful people, people who get drunk and belligerent, people who enter stores and cause a disturbance, people who seem to have been raised by wild pigs in the forest and have no semblance of how to behave in a public setting. The guy in this film has the right idea; chop them up, and feed them to the other pigs. This sounds like a great set-up, and I am glad that someone finally took it upon himself to realize this in an incredibly effective film.

This movie was incredibly well-acted, the gore was generous and well done, and the script was interesting without being overtly preachy. Overall, it was the perfect movie anyone could have made based on the premise. The one sour note is the shift in tone towards the end of the film. It is not bad, per se, it just really threw me off, emotionally. I will be keeping a close eye on the creative team behind this movie. They deserve as much praise as the film industry can muster.

K-Shop makes some good points about lad (and ladette) culture and racial bigotry but the protagonist is just too moody to sympathise with and the film takes such a long time to say anything. A vague almost romance with a hotel manageress goes nowhere and the drug dealing subplot is underwritten and shoehorned in. Had potential.. never reaches it though. Oh and also features some nasty body dismemberment porn! Not quite sure if this was a slasher horror, a thriller or a social commentary. Might have been all three but wasn't good at any one of them.

Next to being many other things, "K-Shop" first and foremost is an effectively harsh and confronting satire on England, and particularly how its culture and dignity completely deteriorated in the past two decades. It's abundantly clear that the film fiercely denounces the disgusting (but sadly very realistic and not exaggerated) British binge-drinking tragedies that occur every weekend, as well as all the vulgarities and embarrassment linked to them. But the obviously very cynical and embittered writer/director Dan Pringle simultaneously also criticizes many other shameless vices, most notably how disrespectfully English people treat the immigrants and how they stupidly idolize losers that basically didn't accomplish anything except for appearing in the media (like, for example, the winner of the "Big Brother" reality-TV show). But "K-Shop" is certainly also an insane black comedy and a gorier-than- expected horror/thriller, dealing with a variety of interesting themes including cannibalism, vigilante and modern day Sweeney Todd! Especially considering this is Dan Pringle's long- feature film debut, "K-Shop" definitely exceeded my expectations and – although it's about 30-40 minutes too long – I would label it as one of the more successful and recommendable horror movies to emerge from Britain in the last five years.

Salah Sabir is of Turkish descent, but born and raised in England and a successful student at a prominent London university. He has to interrupt his studies to return home to Bournemouth where his father, a devoted and ambitious kebab shop owner, suffers with his health. Before he properly recovers, Salah's father is killed following a banal dispute with a group of drunken party animals. Salah decides to stay a while and temporarily run the shop, but his contempt and oppressed hatred towards these idiotic binge-drinkers quickly escalates. He accidentally kills an aggressive customer in his deep fryer and sees no other option but to process the cadaver into the special kebab meat recipe! The K-shop becomes a huge hit in the late-night life, and since there are always more than enough imbecilic drunkards entering the shop to irritate Salah, he never runs out of meat… Salah runs the shop for 7 great years, but then he gradually gets into trouble as the number of missing person cases is immense and several people in his surrounding grow suspicious. In case it was Dan Pringle's primary objective to make a social statement, then … well … he certainly made his point! I'm neither a binge-drinker nor an Englishman, but I felt a surrogate sense of shame throughout nearly the entire movie. There's a massive amount of (stock-) footage depicting people drinking, fighting, misbehaving, vomiting, urinating and even fornicating in public. It's nasty and marginal, but you know it's the truth and that makes it rather depressing. The film isn't entirely flawless, neither. Two hours is definitely too long for this type of movie and it feels as if Pringle easily could have cut or shrunk several sequences and even entire sub plots. The irrelevant and slowly developing romance between Salah and the charming Sarah shouldn't have been included, for instance, especially since it never really goes anywhere concrete, and also the sub plot with his alert weekend helper Malik is quite redundant. The acting performances are terrific and the soundtrack contains a large number of exhilarating and inciting music.

K-Shop brought back some memories. I used to have a summer job working in a restaurant in a seaside resort. We had to deal with drunken revellers at weekends, a few would get abusive. Although we did not mince them up and serve them up as the kebab special as they do here.

Salah is a student who helps out in his dad's kebab shop in a seaside town. When his father is killed by some yobs, Salah snaps when he is later confronted by an abuser. To get rid off the body he puts them through a mincer and serves them to obnoxious customers. Pretty soon Salah gets a taste of murder and in his sights is a nightclub owner who peddles drugs into the community.

K-Shop is a dark comic horror film about broken Britain which goes on a binge at the weekends. It aspires to be a modern version of Sweeney Todd but the film is too long and the main character is too subdued. Although conflicted with the crimes he commits, we also sense Salah was already damaged as he and his dad fled a war torn middle eastern country, presumably Iraq.