Shallow Grave: A Triple-Crossing Treat

Obnoxious flatmates Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, and Kerry Fox get way more than they bargained for with the arrival of enigmatic Keith Allen and a suitcase full of cash.

The macabre black-comic crime caper that started it all

Rereleased for its 30th anniversary, Shallow Grave is a bizarre Edinburgh noir that centers on cover-ups, disloyalty, and incompetent corpse-management. The film is reminiscent of Ealing’s style, with touches of Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry and Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane. It’s also a kind of 90s young person flatshare entertainment, but closer to the BBC’s This Life than Friends.

We get an embarrassment of riches in the cast, with Peter Mullan, Ken Stott, and Gary Lewis in small roles. But it’s the three stars who jump out of the screen at you: sexy hospital doctor Juliet, played by Kerry Fox, morose bespectacled accountant David, played by Christopher Eccleston, and louche and grinning journalist Alex, played by Ewan McGregor.

“But Juliet, you’re a doctor. You kill people every day.”

This grisly trio of entirely obnoxious individuals have a huge flat in Edinburgh and need a fourth person to share the bills. After auditioning a few people and variously pranking and humiliating them – behavior which alone justifies everything they get, including the beating Alex receives in a hotel lavatory – they agree to a certain coolly mysterious applicant, played by Keith Allen, who claims to be writing a novel about the death of a priest. It is this enigmatic new flatmate who is to bring murder and chaos, double-cross and triple-cross, into these hapless people’s lives.

Ewan McGregor’s breakout role

The three leads each bring a fierce performance flavor. Fox’s Juliet is bored, sensual, idly fancying the correspondingly horny Alex, but clearly unable to decide if he is just too annoying to be worth it. Eccleston’s uptight and much-teased David has a streak of violence. But this was the film that first really alerted us to the unique talent of McGregor, the slippery stripling with the rodenty smirk.

A film that showcases Danny Boyle’s turbocharged showmanship

Shallow Grave is persistently cynical and uningratiating, a tale of nasty, greedy, stupid people who don’t realize that the finders-keepers rule doesn’t apply to a suitcase full of cash whose criminal owners will not merely want it back but want to create the specific circumstances in which Juliet, David, and Alex will be unable to testify against them in a court of law. A sour treat.

A film that will keep you on the edge of your seat