Bienvenue au cottage

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.

I first saw this in 2008 on a dvd which I own. Revisited it recently. This film is a genre mashup like From Dusk till Dawn. Its starts like a comedy n then after 45 mins changes into a gory horror film. Apart from being inspired by TCM, it has also borrowed elements from Hatchet which came one year before this film. The best part about this film is the gore. It has a nasty scene similar to the one from Antropophagus.

Two brothers, David & Peter, kidnap Tracey, the daughter of local tough guy gangster Arnie, they hold her to ransom for the sum of £100,000. What they hadn't bargained into the equation is that Tracey is one tough feisty lady, and that a turn of events will lead them to something far more scary than big bad gangster Arnie.

This is the second feature from director Paul Andrew Williams, and bearing in mind that his debut effort was the highly lauded gritty drama London To Brighton, it's no surprise to find that some folk are a little bemused as to the genre splicing nature of The Cottage. The Cottage is far more in keeping with Christopher Smith's 2006 horror comedy, Severance, and certainly it wouldn't be out of place as a double bill with that criminally undervalued picture.

Very much a film of two halves, this picture is likely to prove a very divisive piece, and it will (has) only find an audience based on word of mouth alone. You will be hard pressed to find any sort of press marketing that will prepare you for the type of genre fusion film you are getting. Already, based on the comments written on this site thus far, you can see that some people were confused (or annoyed) by the tonal shift for the second half of the film. The first half sees poles apart brothers, David & Peter, swapping comedy dialogue as they whisk through a number of exchanges and circumstances with the marvellously volatile Tracey. While the second part of the picture hits you over the head with a quick switch to horror formula that has catering fulfilment for the gore junkies amongst us.

And this is where the problem lies with many, why didn't the film stay as a kidnap farce? Why didn't it set its stall out to be a horror film from the off? There is no denying that the films' high points come with the horror moments, but the film is first and foremost a comedy, from the first reel to the cheeky end of credits sequence it is what it is. As deliciously sick as the gore shift is, The Cottage never once takes its tongue out of its bloody cheek. It's obvious that Paul Andrew Williams is having fun here, and he is clearly hoping his audience will as well. View it as an all encompassing comedy/horror/thriller in that order and you wont go far wrong.

Andy Serkis plays David, the tough brother of the two, with Serkis doing a wonderful line in both visual and vocal comedy. This benefits Reece Shearsmith as Peter, a character so far under the thumb he can barely be seen. Shearsmith feeds off of Serkis to seal the comedy deal for this odd brotherly couple. British tabloid fave Jennifer Ellison plays Tracey, literally swearing for England to have the audience divided as to if they want her to survive or not! But it's a gutsy show from her and one hopes she ventures into this territory a bit more often. There is nothing new or fresh here, and this wont win any awards; even in its homeland of England, but it is FUN and it shows a director intent on making films from different genres. 8/10

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.

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.