Citadel
A panic-attack thriller that vilifies the block.
DIRECTED BY CIARÁN FOY
Although premised on a traumatic real-life mugging suffered by writer-director Ciarán Foy, the fact that Citadel—the latest entry in the burgeoning UK sub-genre known as “hoodie horror”—is based on a true story doesn’t excuse the ugliness of its allegorical thrust. Foy’s feature debut, which opens with a pack of hooded youths plunging a filthy syringe into the belly of the protagonist’s pregnant wife, gives clumsy credence to tabloid fear mongers, rendering literal the notion that blame for Birtain’s social ills lies with its “feral” urban underclass.
Citadel‘s dubious politics may not be wholly deliberate: Foy’s teen terrors are supernaturally attuned to fear, suggesting an attempt on the part of the filmmaker to make clear how prejudice and class anxiety can perpetuate social deprivation. Sadly, any such insights are undermined by a third act that casts aside nuanced subtext in favour of rote frights. It’s also difficult to believe that Foy means to redeem, rather than demonize, when the one character to urge sympathy for the monstrous minors promptly pays a brutal price for her misplaced compassion.