Citadel

Directed by Ciaran Foy. Starring Aneurin Barnard, James Cosmo. 84 mins

A gritty and compelling inner-city nightmare, Irish director Ciaran Foy’s nasty horror film makes for interesting viewing alongside this fortnight’s The Purge. While the latter’s undeveloped social allegory is decidedly left-leaning, criticising the compassionless elite, Citadel sits firmly on the other side of the fence. Though mostly a portrayal of fear and paranoia, it’s also a damning denouncement of the underclass, who are depersonalised and presented as snarling, soulless zombies in hoodies.
Aneurin Barnard is superb as bereaved single father Tommy, who watched in horror as his wife was viciously attacked by feral youths in their dilapidated apartment block. As Tommy succumbs to fear, Foy cloaks the dark picture in a sickly palette of bilious yellows and greens, and follows Tommy’s erratic behaviour with a slightly swaying camera. The Cronenberg-inspired effect is fitting, as we are watching both an individual and society decay from the inside out.
Tommy’s agoraphobia makes for brilliantly disquieting viewing, as his constant sense of dread and mistrust is evocative of the consuming paranoia of The Wicker Man. However, Foy’s film falters following the introduction of a mercurial priest (James Cosmo), whilst a flimsy mythology about the faceless youths also fails to convince.
The misguided supernatural undertones don’t detract from Foy’s strong – if controversial - socio-political message. As peace is presented as something only possible through complete eradication of the zombified youth, the tone is distinctly fascist and poverty-despising – but it’s an attitude that’s presented as justified.
Based on his own experience of violence and agoraphobia, Foy’s film feels in many ways like an intimate revenge fantasy. Capturing the one-note, politically incorrect nature of fear, it may not win over liberals, but it makes for interesting viewing.