Cabana Macabra

British horror movies have always had a unique sense of humour, with "Severance" being a good recent example of savvy brit film-makers throwing laughs and gore together to great effect. This carries on that tradition, and in Reece Shearsmith they're blessed with an actor whose comic chops are well up to scratch. Andy Serkis is no slouch either, playing the straight man brilliantly as a mobster who's hard as nails but a little fuzzy on the inside.

The laughs are pretty reliable, and as the situation goes from bad to worse a lot of those laughs come from the (severe) misfortune of the poor souls on screen, and the blend of splatter and slapstick is well tuned. Jennifer Ellison does grate after a while, her constant use of swearing amusing at times but often a little irritating. Still, she has a fantastic body on her and that ball shrivellingly tough accent to fall back on, so her presence isn't entirely unwelcome. As a comedy it works extremely well, and as a gore movie there's some inventively wince-inducing moments, and with the balance just right "The Cottage" is well worth a visit.

When David (Andy Serkis) and his clumsy brother Peter (Reece Shearsmith) kidnap the daughter of a powerful gangster, they bring Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) to a cottage in the countryside in the trunk of their car. Peter calls Tracey's father and asks a ransom of one hundred thousand pound to be delivered to her step-brother Andrew (Steve O'Donnell). When the bag is delivered to the moron Andrew, he does not check the content and is followed to the remote location by two Chinese hit-men hired by Tracey's father. When the abductors discover that the bag has only paper, David drives to a nearby village to make a phone call to demand the money. When he returns, he finds Andrew fainted and later that Tracey had reverted the situation and escaped with his brother as hostage. Meanwhile an insane and deformed farmer has just killed the killers and Tracey and Peter are heading to his farmer seeking a phone to call her father.

I had a great expectation with "The Cottage" but I found it disappointing. The black-humor never works except in the two very last scenes (in the end of the credits there is a last one). The characters Peter and Andrew are stupid and annoying and the psychopath serial-killer is a rip-off of Leatherface. In the end I found this movie only reasonable and my vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Cabana Macabra" ("Macabre Cottage")

The horror-comedy film has to be one of the most difficult types to get right, and more often than not the efforts of those who attempt it are mediocre to say the least. Shaun of the Dead and The Evil Dead movies work pretty well, but other than these two (and maybe the first Tremors) the genre is littered with failures. The Cottage, while not an out and out failure, does struggle in its attempt to mix laughs with gore but, despite this, it does manage to be reasonably entertaining.

In a rare leading role Andy Serkis plays a down-on-his-luck villain who has talked his finicky brother (League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith) into helping him kidnap the foul-mouthed daughter (Jennifer Ellison) of a lap-club owner in an attempt to earn enough to buy himself a boat and sail away to a better life. The trouble is that the daughter, Tracey, is more feisty than both the brothers and their hapless accomplice, Tracey's step-brother Andrew (Steven O'Donnell) put together and soon has the tables turned.

The film switches from a crime comedy to a gory horror when the various characters gradually converge on a remote farmhouse inhabited by a faceless farmer (reminiscent of TCSM's Leatherface) who sets about killing them in a variety of inventive ways.

The film never really sets out to scare the viewer with sudden noises or jump cuts, but it does wallow in various different forms of mutilation and amputation. It's heavily influenced by – and references – a number of classic horror films while managing to keep its own identity but, as others have pointed out, it is wildly uneven with the fate of one character and the back-story of the deranged farmer insufficiently explained. Other minus points are Serkis' largely monotone delivery of his lines and a huge amount of profanity. I've been known to utter the odd swear word myself every hour or so, but the guys in this film seem unable to string a sentence together without inserting at least a couple of the choicest swear words.

The best way to sum up this film is 'interesting...!' The violence, blood and gore is fantastic. If you want to see people decapitated and hacked to bits and want to laugh at the same time, this recent British horror comedy is definitely for you. The main characters are fun, likable and witty, Andy Serkis is fantastic, the dialogue is hilarious and the film is just entertaining from start to finish.

However, the storyline is quite simply all over the place. It's an incoherent mess to be exact! The film just twists and turns in different directions raising a number of questions, which it then leaves unanswered. Characters and subplots are introduced and then forgotten about. However, I'm guessing most people would not want to see this for the plot so if you just want some mindless, gory fun, go and see this.

i guess i should call it a sarcastic horror-comedy show with "vintage" elements. it actually starts as a kidnapping thriller and ends up as a "traditional" horror. only the last 30 minutes could be considered as "horror".

a few things must be said. the pace of the movie is slow and sometimes very slow. but if you keep that in mind and you are in mood for some "dark" comedy you might as well enjoy it as i did.compared to "Shaun of the Dead" is not as funny but a bit more scarier. something to watch out of boredom and it might entertain you in that case( like when you busy with something else and need a background distraction that WILL get at least a few "gigs" out of you). overall i was not disappointed.this feature is missing a defined plot and i am not sure what that "point" would have been here( or could have), other then some really funny sarcastic jokes and some gore.

the main actor to watch here is Andy Serkis as one of the 2 brothers and the mastermind before the kidnapping.he does some great acting when everything goes wrong and it is quiet funny to watch him deal with his naturally idiotic brother( which at one point even personalizes Hitler, literally, but the character does not seem to be aware of that). there are also a few other characters but they not contribute much to the plot except for the "bad" one. the soundtrack is actually excellent in creating those horror "vintage" moods.