Elfie Hopkins

I came across this title in one of the horror magazines I read and having a child called Elfie I saw this laying for a dumping price at a sell out of one of the HMV stores in London. What I did know was that people hated it or loved it. In between didn't exist.

Elfie Hopkins (Jaime Winstone) lives in a boring village on the country side and the only thing she does is getting a fight with her step-mother and doing investigations with her friend Dylan Parker (Aneurin Barnard) throughout the town and getting stoned together. Suddenly new neighbours appear, the Gammons and people disappear in the town. Both they start to do their homework on the Gammons.

What the film delivers is a lot of blah blah. It's only at 1 hour that we see what the Gammons really are. It's also the moment that a bit of black humour comes in with the severed ear for example or the waving with the arm but for many it will be too late to save this slow moving flick. It takes maybe 3 minutes and we move further into a lot of blah blah because nobody believes Elfie.

You can easily spot that Dylan is in love with Elfie and that takes an important part too throughout Elfie Hopkins. There isn't any gore or nudity to spot. It's just about two friends involving into a story they couldn't see coming.

Did I like it or hate it. It's hard to tell because it isn't for everybody due the talking and it do has a severed head here and there. On the other hand it isn't like Twilight were nothing really happens except whispering towards each other. And it isn't also an arty horror. Just one of those flicks that stands alone, maybe forget the first hour, it's from that point that it turns into a nasty thing.

Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 1/5

This is much better than reviews would suggest. On a scale of 0-10 for flawed films where 0 = The Wicker Tree (flawed and bad), 5 = Ginger Snaps (flawed but good), 10 = Dellamorte Dellamore, aka Cemetery Man (flawed but brilliant), this rates 5 +/- 1, depending on what you think of the acting.

The film itself is well shot, well conceived and well executed. Compared to utter crud like Jeepers Creepers, this is in a different league when it comes to intention and execution. If Amicus produced Midsomer Murders, it could be something like this.

There are annoyances: poor dialogue, clichéd characterisation but also pleasant surprises: my heart sank a little when the film began with a girl (our heroine, a "final girl" right from the start: she just doesn't realise it) getting out of a car that won't start on a country lane. Nicely subverted when she walks a little distance and is home.

It is a first feature and has maybe a few too many references but, on the whole, its sly humour works well. I've watched an awful lot of crap horror in the so-bad-it's-good category: this is not one of those.

It's a proper film and is worth a look.

Bored stoner Elfie Hopkins (Jaime Winston) tries to make village life a little more interesting by dabbling in amateur detective work, investigating the lives of other locals with a little help from fellow weed-toker Dylan (Aneurin Barnard). When a sophisticated city family, The Gammons, moves into the house next door, Elfie's investigative nature begins to tell her something isn't quite right with her new neighbours. Digging into their background, she uncovers a horrific secret that puts the lives of her nearest and dearest in mortal danger.

It took me a while to warm to Elfie Hopkins: at first I found the central character rather irritating, Jaime Winston's attempts at cool and quirky seeming just a little too calculated to appeal to the cult movie contingent (her lovable slacker routine reminding me a little of Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead). But as the story progressed, the film gradually started to grow on me, Winston's appeal winning through, the whimsical nature of the story and creepy antagonists slowly getting under the skin. By the time all becomes clear for the final act, I actually found myself enjoying proceedings. The finalé is a real crowd-pleaser, Elfie tooling up for a revenge-driven gore-fest that really gets the blood pumping.

To sum up: the film's offbeat and rather relaxed approach makes it hard to get involved, but perseverance pays off, with a particularly fun finish. A sequel with Elfie investigating even more outlandish situations wouldn't be entirely unwelcome. 6/10, although a repeat viewing might see me bump my rating up to 7.

An aspiring teen detective (Jaime Winstone) stumbles into her first real case, when investigating the mysterious new family in her neighborhood... are they cannibals?

I really have no review to put here because it just is not a film that captured my imagination. I do not want to say it was good or bad, because it never really amounted to much one way or the other. I felt like there was potential, but it just did not try hard enough.

To properly review this I would have to watch it again, which I have no intention of doing. I cannot recall ever being so apathetic concerning a title ever... which is pretty bad. Typically there is something that jumps out as great or terrible... I guess I really liked the music in the third act, but that is not saying much.

The film follows a pair of detective-wannabe stoners who begin investigating a suspicious family who move into their sleepy hunting village in England. While billed as a horror film it's actually more of a quirky coming-of-age story that just so happens to feature cannibalism and gratuitous violence. The story is overshadowed by the vivid characterisation and splendid performances from the cast. Jamie Winstone and Aneurin Barnard are engaging and likable as the oddball pot-loving duo at the centre of the film while the bizarre family of Gammons provide comedy and terror in equal part.

Elfie Hopkins is a B-movie story with fully-fleshed and precisely portrayed characters that is entertaining, heartwarming and occasionally rather gruesome, with a hilarious cameo from Ray Winstone. It takes elements of cult cinema and mixes them with slick contemporary filmmaking to make the ideal midnight movie and a promising debut from a new young director. As Elfie would say, "skin up", sit back and enjoy.