Citadel

Brilliant social horror. Citadel is a dirty and depressive story drawing from 1970s David Cronenberg (The Brood, Shivers). It’s not something you see much these days, so I’m very satisfied, though it’s lacking something to go all the way to the top. For instance, I would do away with the secondary characters: the black nurse and the weird parson – it could have been only about Tommy. But there’s no reason to complain, few horror flicks have a better atmosphere. (16/11/2012)

Through its film industry, British society has found itself in a Catch-22 situation. On the one hand, it has films for young viewers that mislead their audience with images of suburban youth that reinforce a poseur lifestyle, a tough life on the edge of the law and violent opposition to the conservatism of the older generation. On the other hand, it gives older viewers films like Eden Lake and Harry Brown, which exploit fears of uncontrollable youths for whom nothing is sacred. Citadel seemingly falls into the latter category described above, but even though it adopts some elements of that category, it rather reflects the impacts of exploitation films on society. It doesn’t merely reinforce prejudices against young people, but directly thematises fear, which these formulaic images intensify in viewers. The film F previously attempted to give a horror veneer to the phenomenon of violence and the uncontrollability of youths from socially disadvantaged families, but it wasn’t until Citadel that filmmakers made fear of the horrors lurking beyond the safety of home the central theme of a film. The film’s sinister, loutish characters dressed in their iconic hoodies represent not only a direct physical threat to the protagonist, but also an indestructible evil that threatens to strike at his core by pulling what is most dear to him, his child, over to its side. This level of sophistication, as well as the ability to capture the oppressive atmosphere of almost paranoid, permanent fear, makes Citadel an exceptional work not only in the context of British horror movies. (27/04/2013)