The World We Knew

 British indie horror/crime hybrid The World We Knew is pretty impressively crafted - a consummately professional film that hides its low budget extremely well. It's so well made that it's easy to overlook that the script doesn't really do much with its cool premise ('a bunch of criminals hole up in an haunted hideout') other than let the criminals hang out and maybe see a ghost now and again. Maybe that's enough, when the movie is as engaging as this.

 The criminals are Barker (Struan Rodger), the old hand, experienced and theatrical; Gordon (Johan Myers), boisterous, unpredictable; Stoker (Kirk Lake, also has a writing credit along with director Matthew Jones), who's in it to go legit; And last but not least Poe (Alex Wells), the audience surrogate, a reluctant criminal who nonetheless shot a cop. They're laying low after a job gone wrong (left, as in Reservoir Dogs, an obvious inspiration, off-camera) that left a policeman and one of the criminals dead, and another one of theirs shot and bleeding to death upstairs.
 The location is an old abandoned house in the countryside, and they're left to the tender care of Carpenter (Finbar Lynch in a very Mark Strong role), another criminal who's higher up in the chain and is charged with figuring out what to do with the sorry lot. And when it starts looking like they were set up, that involves making them all stay the night to find out what really happened.

 There is good tension between the characters, and some intrigue - who set them up? Is Carpenter gearing up to kill them all as loose ends? Is Gordon going to snap and shoot up the place? Later things take a supernatural bent as the past starts intruding on the present. All of the plot points fizz out ineffectively, though; there is a twist at the end, but it barely registers. What remains is a quiet, atmospheric character drama, and while most of the characters are fairly stereotypical, they're no grandstanding motormouth gangsters. Everyone's given at least some depth and the dialog is written well enough to keep things interesting.
 That is, as long as you can understand it; the sound mix, which sometimes buries the actors' lines, plus the heavy British accents and sometimes mumbled dialog can sometimes make things hard to follow. The acting is pretty good, with most of the actors displaying the required gravitas, regret and/or menace, and the soundtrack (from French band The Limiñanas) is excellent, sounding like an indie psych-rock band doing a spaghetti western set - plus some cool synthy tracks thrown in for good measure.
 The filmmaking is also good, with a strong command of ambiance and well-considered handheld shots (DP: Laurens Scott, directed by Matthew Benjamin Jones and Luke Skinner). This is a movie that punches far above its weight in almost all respects.

 It fumbles a few times. Mostly in the plot department, but there's also a pivotal scene with Eddie confronting his sins that's a bit cringeworthy. And even when it's well written, there are some scenes that seem to be there just to pad out the run time: I'm all for a lovely retelling of the Orpheus myth, but to be honest if there's a thematic link other than the whole underworld business... I didn't catch it. Points for trying though.
 All these weaknesses don't do much to dilute its strengths, particularly when it's over at a lean eighty-two minutes. I hesitate to call it a horror movie; even with all of the principals named after famous horror authors and directors, it doesn't really even attempt to be scary. But whatever the genre, it's pretty damn good.