Film review
Directed by Philip Ridley
Starring Jim Sturgess, Eddie Marsan, Clémence Poésy, Noel Clarke Joseph Mawle
Release date 21 May 2010 (UK)

Jamie Morgan (Sturgess), a lonely young man with a heart-shaped birthmark on his face, discovers demons on the streets of London. When tragedy strikes, he becomes determined to take vengeance…

Philip Ridley is gradually carving out a niche for offbeat, original and flawed dark fantasy. His previous works, The Reflecting Skin and The Passion of Darkly Noon, used horror to explore themes of incest, madness and religion, and Heartless is another mix of horrific fantasy and equally horrific reality.

Like Eden Lake and Harry Brown, Heartless explores fears about a broken society – feral youths, random acts of violence, urban degradation. As crime rates in East London spiral out of control, Jamie (an impressive pain-etched performance from Sturgess) is touched by tragedy and makes a shocking discovery: the hoodies that stalk the streets are actually demons…

It may have echoes of underwhelming ITV series Demons, but Ridley’s movie is a far bleaker, more adult affair. The story develops along on laudably unpredictable lines, as the diffident Jamie meets the quietly sinister ‘Weapons Man’ (a deadpan Eddie Marsan) and makes a Faustian pact with demon overlord Papa B (an overly restrained Joseph Mawle).

Heartless has plenty of terrific ideas but the jumbled elements never quite hold together, and at times it feels as if Ridley is making up the entire thing as he goes along. It also lacks the nightmarish sense of strangeness and morbid wit of Clive Barker’s dark fantasies (an obvious influence). There’s a brilliant sequence in which Jamie brings a male prostitute back to his flat with consequences that lurch from darkly funny to deeply disturbing, but for the most part Heartless isn’t twisted enough to satisfy horror fans and is too pulpy for the Brit arthouse crowd.

The highlight of Heartless is the demons themselves. With their ugly monstrous mugs (created by subtle FX work from Framestore) and a tendency to emit horrific screeching sounds, the creatures are likely to give even David Cameron second thoughts about hugging a hoodie. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 6/10
Ridley gets full marks for attempting a horror that eschews current trends, but the ambitious story is muddled and suffers from a rather obvious final twist.