K-Shop

Awesome film. Captures the dark side of UK booze culture in a very entertaining way. Love the plot, love the gore, love the characters! The camera work captures the depravity that exists in UK nightlife in a way that is all too real for any of us who have been in a kebab shop past 11pm on a weekend. The creators have not held back on the realism of the most horrid scenes. Weak stomachs beware, there is no holding back! The characters are well thought out. Sadly, we have all met people who fit the bill, the cast does them all great justice. The realness of these horrible people is scarily accurate and really sucks you into the dark side of UK nightlife. Strongly recommend.

All round, decent. Mostly good writing, good cast and interesting story, the only thing that let's it's down is Ziad Abaza. He is objectively a good actor, he just lacks any emotion to anything he does, it always feels as though he is reading lines. Because of that we are left to feel the emotions of the supporting cast who do a great jobby wobby.

Ps:Is Madonna still sexy?

Salah,a student & refugee, inherits a seaside kebab shop when his father dies during an altercation with some drunken yobs. Subjected to constant verbal (much of it racist) and physical abuse Salah ends up killing a violent customer and disposing of his body in his kebabs. He goes on to repeat this several times over. This could have been a simple kill 'em and eat 'em gore movie, it certainly wouldn't be the first. However K-Shop addresses issues such as racism, violence, alcohol abuse & greed (the ambitious & ruthless local night club owner). The movie uses real footage of drunken people fighting, being sick, exposing themselves, having sex, etc, all in public. Sadly an all too familiar sight in towns & cities across Britain come the weekends. Watching the fictional Salah bloodily butcher his victims may prove too much for some viewers but it's the real anti social behaviour caused by alcohol that is truly shocking.

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.

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.