Movie Review: The Cottage (2008)

The Cottage (2008)

Unevenly Entertaining

Directed By: Paul Andrew Williams
Starring: Andy Serkis, Reece Shearsmith, & Jennifer Ellison
MPAA Rating: “Unrated”

So, this is really the second review that I have written for The Cottage. The first has been completely deleted, because I felt that it did not accurately depict my feelings toward the film. Upon reading it after submitting it, I found that it seemed to be far too negative and, despite my three-out-of-five star rating (which I also moved up to a three-and-a-half star rating), I felt that this needed to be reconciled. And so I am writing a second review. I liked The Cottage a lot as a comedy and felt that it was a little better than average as a horror movie. Looking at the film as a whole, it is a really funny and surprisingly gory British comedy that would have worked better had the filmmakers combined the two aspects (the horror and the comedy) in a more effective way. As it is, the film feels as though we are watching a comedy that suddenly breaks into a horror movie within a matter of minutes.

David (Serkis) and Peter (Shearsmith) are two very different brothers who have found themselves in a spot of trouble. Desperate for money, David orchestrates the kidnapping of pampered princess Tracey (Ellison) and convinces Peter to go along with it by promising him complete ownership of their deceased mother’s home. They take the angry young woman to a secluded cottage and send word to her father about their ransom demands. When Tracey orchestrates an ingenious escape and turns the tables on her captors by kidnapping Peter, she carries him off into the woods. The pair stumbles across another cottage nearby and looks to it for some kind of help. Instead, they find a hulking and brutal serial killer with a fetish for heads who does not want them to leave.

The Cottage is, if nothing else, a well-made and well-acted comedy that keeps its audience almost completely entertained throughout the duration. The film begins suddenly (in a good way) by throwing us immediately into the kidnapping plot and telling us that things are not going well. Much of the rest is about how the plot goes from bad to worse. The beautiful, but annoying Tracey is far more intelligent than the two bumbling kidnappers and, given the fact that they have the upper hand (she is bound and gagged), it is fun to watch them all butt horns. When Tracey breaks Peter’s nose, I thought I would die laughing. Her big escape is hilarious and completely appropriate to the film. When the horror kicks in, I was not impressed with the originality, but the creative gore scenes really bowled me over. This movie packs a harsh punch.

So, if I enjoyed all of this about the film, why did it not get a perfect score? Well, there are a few times when the pace slows to a crawl and nearly stops, taking us out of the action for a little too long. Also, the horror and the comedy do not really gel that well. Imagine if you got halfway through Halloween (1978) and it suddenly turned into a comedy. That’s how The Cottage felt, except opposite. It didn’t really work well for me. Also, was it just me or was the horror aspect completely underplayed? It made up a small fraction of the runtime and was never really developed enough for me. Who was the killer? Who were those cannibal women in his basement? I have no idea. However, even if The Cottage has several holes in its narrative and somewhat of a creaky overall structure, it is quite a fun film that sports a sleek sense of humor and some pretty wicked kill sequences.