Behind the Couch

2012 Dir. Ciarán Foy An agoraphobic young man teams up with a renegade priest to save his baby daughter from a gang of seemingly demonic youths. Citadel [sit-uh-del] noun 1. A fortress that commands a city and is used in the control of the inhabitants and in defence during attack or siege. 2. Any strongly fortified place; stronghold. Right from the get-go, with its depictions of a run-down council estate in Glasgow, having fallen into decline and become a shadowy place of menace, writer/director Foy establishes an atmosphere of dread and creepy tension. With its opening scene, in which Tommy (Aneurin Barnard) watches helplessly as a group of hooded youths attack his pregnant wife, unable to do anything as he’s stuck in the rickety lift of the tower block where they live, Foy ratchets up the tension good and tight. And rarely lets go. Effortlessly playing on contemporary social fears and anxieties, such as the breakdown of community, the failure of welfare systems set up to ...

2010 Dir. Johannes Roberts A number of teachers and pupils staying late in a suburban school are menaced by murderous youths. The problems faced by teachers in British schools have been fairly ubiquitous in mainstream media for a number of years now. As well as having to contend with an overwhelming abundance of bureaucracy and red tape on a daily basis, in increasingly extreme cases they’re also even having to deal with violence from pupils and parents. A number of cases have been well publicised in British newspapers. To ensure I don’t digress, just go here to read about the many trials and tribulations facing those in the teaching profession today. F , along with a number of recent similarly themed films such as Eden Lake and Cherry Tree Lane , as well as the French home invasion shocker Ills , and the American slow-burner The Strangers, have been exploiting a seeming wariness and fear of today’s youth. And in what better location to weave a tale of ‘hoodie horror’ than ...