Cinema review
Directed by Sean Ellis
Starring Lena Headey, Richard Jenkins, Asier Newman, Michelle Duncan, Melvil Poupaud
Release date January 2009 (UK)

Shortly before she's involved in a car crash, Gina McVey (Headey) glimpses what appears to be her double driving past her. Following the accident, Gina only has a hazy memory of what happened. But she has a nagging feeling that her boyfriend is no longer himself. Is she going crazy or is something more sinister going on?

Sean Ellis’s Cashback, the story of a supermarket worker with the ability to pause time, was perhaps the very definition of ‘promising debut feature’ – a movie brimming with nice ideas and impressive stylistic touches but which suffered from its overly whimsical tone. Well, there’s nothing whimsical about Ellis’s sophomore effort – in fact, there’s very little humour at all. It’s an efficient, sleek and cold movie in both style and content – appropriate because, as is made clear from the sweeping overhead shots of City skyscrapers, this is very much a movie about modern London.

Like many terror directors before him, Ellis is hugely influenced by Hitchcock (especially Vertigo, though there are also touches of Psycho) as Gina begins to doubt her sanity and struggles to remember the events surrounding her car crash. It’s a tense, well-executed mystery, but you do watch wondering whether Ellis will be able to be able to develop his story above fun-but-disposable Hitchcock throwbacks like Shattered, Deceived and Raising Cain. In fact, the film doesn’t progress as you initially think it will at all, and by the end Ellis is looking to different influences entirely (to say any more would spoil the movie). Some will probably consider the developments rather silly and unoriginal (what horror movie these days is entirely original?), but it all makes sense within the context of the film’s setting.

For anyone who caught Cashback it is perhaps surprising to see just how adept Ellis is at crafting a genuinely scary horror-thriller, though in fact his first short movie Left Turn was within this genre. Helped by a swelling orchestral score, Ellis creates a genuinely uneasy atmosphere and there’s a scattering of bona fide frights (including a claustrophobic bathtub scene and a brilliant moment when a face emerges from the shadows behind a character).

The Sarah Connor Chronicles’s Lena Headey is coldly convincing as the panic-stricken heroine, but the film also benefits from unusually realistic bit-part playing (just look at the scenes where nurses lift Gina onto an operating table – it almost feels like a documentary). It all adds up to what could be the best British chiller since The Descent. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 8/10
A disquieting, thoughtful and ice-cold horror; Ellis is going to be a director to watch out for.