EIFF 2014: Let Us Prey

This visually stylish low budget horror looks like it’ll be a real treat from the doom-leaden and aggressive opening, as a flock of crows and chilling man-with-no-name (the effortlessly sinister Liam Cunningham) descend on a sleepy Scottish town. Positioning himself within the local police station alongside a nonsensically evil assortment of crims and cops for such a small community (including, really weirdly, Only an Excuse’s Jonathan Watson), Cunningham’s diabolical motives become clear pretty quickly.

Director Brian O’Malley and screenwriters David Cairns and Fiona Watson lay on plenty of fun, with accomplished visual, audio and narrative John Carpenter nods, but all that snappy if unoriginal work is undone almost every time a character opens their mouth. The screenplay houses some of the most cringeworthy, ill judged and plain inexplicable lines of dialogue one could imagine; in particular, the awful parochial “banter” sits uncomfortably with some very strong (often sexual) violence. A jaw-dropping, wonderfully daft denouement where things get a bit Event Horizon brings some icky giggles, but overall it’s a bit of a chore.