K-Shop (2016)

Too many would be UK horror films these day seem to minuscule budgeted student projects shot on somebody's phone, featuring poor performances from amateur (or, at best, semi-professional) casts and try desperately to stretch half an hour's worth of material out to feature length.  By default, they tend to be either zombie or slasher movies - the perception on the part of their makers, doubtless, that these are 'easy' types of film to make.  Actually, they aren't - if nothing else, finding original spins or treatments of these subjects is extremely difficult.  Now, as anybody foolish enough to have read this blog over the past few years will know, I'm not opposed to ultra-low budgeted British productions - I've enjoyed films by the likes of Michael Murphy and I'm always happy to champion the output of the late, great Cliff Twemlow.  But that's because such movies are actually entertaining, making up for their inadequacies with sheer verve, ambition, energy and a clear understanding of cinematic technique.  I'm sure that there are currently low budget genre films out there of similar ilk - it's just that I don't seem to see them.  So I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon K-Shop the other day on a streaming service I sometimes watch.  

Now, when it comes to the originality of its basic concept, K-Shop isn't going to win any prizes: it is basically a modern day Sweeney Todd variation, set in a Bournemouth kebab shop.  Where it scores is in its treatment of the subject.  Rather than a demented barber out for personal gain, its protagonist is a reluctant kebab shop owner who inherited the shop following his father's death in an altercation with drunken club-goers.  Consequently, the son, who gives up his university studies to run the shop, gripped with grief, starts doing in various late-night customers who annoy or offend him and turning them into kebabs.  What's impressive about K-Shop is that where most other treatments of this subject matter would (and, indeed, have) turned it into some kind of 'whacky' black comedy or a gore-fest, writer/director Dan Pringle instead chooses to use it as the background for social commentary on modern Britain, with its binge-drinking and drug fueled sub-culture of racism, violence and extreme anti-social behaviour.  Salah, the shop owner's, victims range from small time rug dealers, to obnoxious drunks to racists, mainly emanating from a nearby nightclub, (run by a slimy reality TV star who is the real villain of the piece, exploiting women and encouraging the substance abuse that drives the victims to their fates).  All are unappealing characters who behave appallingly before their demise, yet, before their demise, we are generally given sufficient insights into their everyday lives to remind us that they are also human beings, with friends and families. 

Best of all, K-Shop actually looks like a professional film.  Despite an obviously tiny budget, with the majority of the action confined to the shop (a real kebab shop in Bournemouth), the moodily lit, dark cinematography is excellent, the editing smooth and effective.  Overall, it achieves a fantastic grimy, late night look.  Much of the footage of drunken revellers is actually real, shot mondo-style on the street and integrates smoothly with the rest of the film.  The gore, while featured sparingly, is extremely well done, with some uncomfortably realistic looking dismemberments. The cast, mostly familiar faces from British TV, are all pretty good, with Ziad Abaza outstanding as Salah.  Indeed, one of the film's strengths is that resists the temptation to turn Salah into some kind of vigilante-type hero, ridding the mean streets of Bournemouth of human vermin.  For one thing, his victims are allowed just enough humanity to make the audience feel that they aren't entirely deserving of their fates, for another, Salah himself isn't drawn as an entirely sympathetic character - his condescending attitude to most of his customers and his assumption of his own superiority to just about everyone he meets are less than endearing.  Nonetheless, Abaza does a good job in portraying Salah's gradual mental disintegration, wracked with grief over his father;s death, resentment at the failure of his academic career and disgust at the degeneracy he sees around him, eventually combining to overwhelm him.  

The film isn't without problems, though.  For one thing, at two hours it is as least half an hour too long.  Also, the portrayal of the various club goers and revellers is problematic, giving the impression that they are a homogeneous group - every one of them a racist, drug dealer and/or psychopath.  By extension, it is implying that everyone under the age of twenty five who goes to a club or likes a drink is automatically a scumbag, which is the sort of sweeping stereotype that would be condemned if applied a specific ethnic or social group.  But, overall, K-Shop represents a welcome attempt to do something a bit different with an established exploitation format.  Certainly, Salah, with his background as a refugee whose family came to the UK to escape the violence of a war, makes a change from your average movie psycho.  K-Shop deserves to be more widely seen, although those expecting a more conventional gore or slasher film might be disappointed.  It is, however, a very atmospheric and intense film, which captures that late-night club-throwing out time feel perfectly.  It is, though, relentlessly down-beat, right through to the end.  A bit like traditional British night-life, really.