The Ghoul

Executive produced by Ben Wheatley, Gareth Tunley's feature debut as writer/director refuses to give the audience an easy ride. It starts like a standard police procedural, as cop Tom Meeten returns to London to join Dan Renton Skinner in investigating the murder of a couple who appear to have kept moving towards their assailant through a volley of bullets. Convinced landlord Rufus Jones is somehow involved, Meeten concocts a plan with profiler Alice Lowe to feign mental distress in order to gain access to the suspect's psychiatrist, Niamh Cusack. By the time Meeten encounters the shrink's mentor (Geoffrey McGivern), most viewers will be confused at best, as Tunley (echoing David Lynch at his most gnomic) has so twisted the tale and blurred the line between reality and madness that attempting to provide a definitive analysis of what's unfolding becomes a fool's errand. Deadpanning for all he's worth, Meeten makes a compelling antihero and he's ably abetted by a supporting cast intent on giving nothing away. Sinuously photographed by Benjamin Pritchard, this will have your head spinning for days.