Directed by Gareth Tunley
Picturehouse, Liverpool
18th – 24th August 2017

Reviewed by Colin Serjent

It is very difficult to describe this movie, which in some ways is a tribute to director Gareth Tunley, of which this is his debut feature film.

Set in a bleak-looking London, photographed exceptionally well by DP Benjamin Pritchard, often shooting at low angles that captures the capital city as a bewildering labyrinth.

This, in some ways, matches the state of mind of the main protagonist Chris (Tom Meeten). Is he an undercover cop investigating a double murder or is he an unemployed depressive who thinks or fantasises that he is such a figure?

Chris apparently feigns mental illness when regularly meeting psychotherapist Helen Fisher (Niamh Cusack), as a means to access the files of another of her patients Michael Coulson (Rufus Jones), a ghoul, who is the prime suspect of the two murders. Coulson certainly has a range of morbid interests!

It is a very convoluted storyline in which fantasy or delusion often overlaps realism and vice versa.

You strongly sense the perplexing nature of Chris’s mind, which gives the film an unsettling edge. B does not follow A at any time.

The M1 is a metaphor for the state of his brain. The dual carriageway of the motorway represents the problem he has in navigating the distinct split personality that he is burdened with, that has led to his psychological isolation.

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