"A poor story, isn't particularly well acted and doesn't look good either. But, it is strangely enjoyable..."

Premiering at last years FrightFest, it's taken over a year for Inbred to finally see the light of day and be released - and director Alex Chandon's first feature for ten years is quite badly made. It tells a poor story, isn't particularly well acted and doesn't look good either. But, it is strangely enjoyable...

Kate (Jo Hartley) and Jeff (James Doherty) are social workers who take a group of four offenders - Tim (James Burrows), Sam (Nadine Rose Mulkerrin), Zeb (Terry Haywood) and Dwight (Chris Waller) away for the weekend to a peaceful retreat in the quiet Yorkshire village of Mortlake, in a bid to rehabilitate and help turn these kids prospects around. However, what was intended to be a equable trip, soon turns into a blood bath.

Mortlake is a strange, remote village and the group get a sense for it's eccentricities when going for a drink in the local pub, run by Jim (Seamus O'Neill), a man of local importance. However, despite his seemingly friendly nature, when an incident occurs between the group, what transpires is a war between our small collective, and the rest of this unusually grotesque village, escalating into a gory and twisted nightmare.

Let's start with the positives - firstly the setting is well chosen, not just for it's picturesque landscapes, but as the background to a horror movie, there are few scarier places than isolated northern villages, places you always feel cautious of when opening your mouth to bear a southern accent. I also appreciate the pensive build up to the action, as the longer you leave it the more effect it has when the action kicks in - especially important in this case as that's when the film starts to go downhill. It's nice to revel in normality for a while.

That's the positives out of the way - now let's start on the performances. Inbred is not very well acted, with a series of quite wooden performances across the board. In a sense it doesn't really matter as if anything the lack of acting credentials almost match the B-movie feel to this film. Yet although it can be perceived that way, one doubts whether the actors had been deliberately bad on purpose.

Hartley is the best of a bad bunch, as she offers an assuring and calming nature, motherly in many ways - the sort of person you seek to depend on when things turn nasty. She is one of three cast members who had appeared in Shane Meadow's Dead Man's Shoes - alongside O'Neill and George Newton - in what is another film about small-town murders. Oh how different the two films are - the three actors in question may want to call Meadows and ask to be involved in his next project, because they evidently aren't having much luck elsewhere.

Inbred is clearly going for that cult status, a pastiche of classic horror movies - yet instead it just comes across as being obscene for the sake of being obscene. I can't find much artistic integrity behind this one. It's a shame as human horror is so often scary due to the plausibility factor, but not in this case. This film isn't scary at all, but on the flip-side, it is rather funny. Not quite sure that is intended, mind. Talking of which, are we supposed to be rooting for the deaths of all of our protagonists as well?

I suppose when viewing this film in the correct way, it can be quite good fun. It's absolutely ridiculous and extremely weird - going down a League of Gentlemen route at one stage. However, if I genuinely felt that Chandon is trying to be deliberately bad and surreal then I'd call it a success, but alas, I fear he is actually attempting to pull off a dark, twisted horror movie, and in that respect it fails miserably. It's been ten years since his last feature, and to be completely honest, it wouldn't be the end of the world if we had to wait ten years for his next one either.