Shallow Grave (1994)
Directed by Danny Boyle

Film Review

Director Danny Boyle's career got off to a flying start with this deliciously macabre black comedy, earning himself instant recognition as one of the most exciting new British film directors of the decade whilst setting a virtual unknown named Ewan McGregor on the road to stardom.  With its savagely dark humour, unsympathetic characters and shocking doses of ultra-violence, Shallow Grave was all too readily likened to Quentin Tarantino's debut feature Reservoir Dogs (1992) and critics were quick to dub Boyle the Tarantino of British cinema.  Whilst the film was generally well-received and proved to be a box office hit (grossing 20 million dollars, a healthy return on its modest 2.5 million dollar budget), it wasn't until Boyle unleashed his next film, Trainspotting (1996) that he secured international acclaim and earned his ticket to Hollywood.

Like its titular grave, the film's plot has little in the way of depth, but if you are worried about that you are somewhat missing the point of the film.  The familiar neo-noir trappings are skilfully employed but these are really just a pretext for what Shallow Grave is really about, which is the ephemeral nature of friendship and the ease with which loyalties can be decimated by private materialistic goals.  Danny Boyle and his faithful screenwriter John Hodge would revisit the same theme in Trainspotting, which is less about drugs abuse and more about the impossibility of sustaining friendships in an increasingly individualistic society.  Like Mark Renton and his drug-addicted buddies in Boyle's second film, the three main protagonists of Shallow Grave allow themselves to be torn apart by greed, their friendly mutual antagonism giving way to something far darker, far deadlier, when they realise that theirs is a genuinely dog-eat-dog world.  What is most unsettling about this film is not its near-the-knuckle violence, nor its bouts of casual sadism, but the corrosively cynical way in which it dissects human relationships and reveals what we are all capable of - betraying our closest friends for our own self-interest.

Another striking similarity with Trainspotting is the fact that Boyle and Hodges appear determined to prevent us from liking their main characters.  Alex, David and Kerry are each a prime example of the late 1980s yuppie - shallow, self-centred and totally amoral.  They are forced together by a mutual need, so that they can hang out in a swanky apartment which none of them could individually afford to rent.  It takes them virtually no time at all to agree to keep the illicitly obtained money and dispose of its owner, which they do with chillingly cold detachment.  What redeems them, and makes them interesting enough to engage with, is the fact that they are such an ineffectual bunch.  They stumble into their crime adventure with all the elegance of someone tripping headfirst down a disused mineshaft.  The fact that they are totally out of their depth and become trapped in a Hell of their own making makes up for their obvious lack of charm and moral awareness.  They get what they deserve, but we wince just a little at their grisly comeuppance.  Everyone loves an amateur, even an amateur gravedigger with homicidal tendencies.

The film's main interest is the way in which the three main characters evolve in the course of their nightmarish exploits.  Alex, the brash tabloid hack, is the one who first strikes us as the monster of the trio.  By comparison, Juliet and David are models of restraint, reluctant accomplices in his scheme.  But as Alex begins to wake up to the horror of his predicament and becomes slightly more human, David goes the other way, transformed from a mild-mannered chartered accountant into a fully-fledged psychopath.  In the end, it is Juliet who is shown to be the worst of the three, driven to monstrous excesses by an insane desire to escape from a hell she can no longer endure.

Hodge's intelligent character-focussed screenwriting and the enjoyably feisty performances from the three leads - Christopher Eccleston and Kerry Fox show that they are more than a match for Ewan McGregor - provide the meat and bone to what might otherwise have been just another anaemic little thriller.  For its sins, Shallow Grave does occasionally wallow in its tacky grand guignol excesses, but Boyle's off-the-wall, energetic direction and Hodge's twisted humour makes up for its occasional lapses, and overall it offers a compelling and satisfying movie experience, albeit one that is ever so slightly unnerving.  If you want to bury a friendship, this is definitely not the way to do it.

Film Synopsis

Alex, David and Juliet are three friends who share a roomy flat in a trendy part of Edinburgh.  Even though they are all professionals (respectively a journalist, accountant and doctor), they need a fourth flatmate if they are to pay their exorbitant rent.  Having interviewed several prospective candidates, they finally find someone as cool, sophisticated and likeably weird as they are, a slightly sinister man named Hugo.  The three friends barely have time to get to know their new flatmate, because the day after he moves in they find him lying dead on his bed, apparently having taken a fatal drugs overdose.  Juliet's first reaction is to call the emergency services, but she changes her mind when a suitcase stuffed with banknotes is found under Hugo's bed.  Alex, David and Juliet now have a choice.  They can either notify the police and hand over the money, as any decent law-abiding citizen should.  Or they can dispose of the body and keep the money for themselves.  It doesn't take the three friends long to agree on the latter course.  But not long after they have buried Hugo (and mutilated his corpse so that it cannot be identified), they are visited by a pair of no-nonsense hoodlums who are determined to get back their booty.  Fortunately, David is by this stage a fully paid-up member of Psychopaths Anonymous and has no intention of giving up the hard earned cash to anyone.  Two more dead bodies and two more furtive late night burials later, Alex and Juliet begin to get a little worried about their friend.  Who is next in line for a shallow grave...?