Those people who were becoming sick of Celtic films with lovingly photographed shots of the verdant landscapes can revel in the screening of "Shallow Grave," a hip, slick Scottish thriller that is the first film in the Thursday Loew series on new Celtic cinema with a truly urban setting.
"Shallow Grave" is the feature-film debut for director Danny Boyle. Alex (Ewan McGregor), Juliet (Kerry Fox) and David (Christopher Eccleston) are, respectively, a journalist, doctor and accountant rooming together in a spacious Edinburgh flat.
At the opening of the film, this trio of yuppies is searching for a roommate but, protective of their space, they are intent on weeding out undesirable applicants with questions like "and how would you react, then, if I told you I was the Antichrist?" and "do a little freebase, maybe, from time to time?"
Those who do not fit their standards are asked "what on earth could make you think we'd want to share a flat like this with someone like you?"
Finally, the friends accept Hugo (Keith Allen), a novelist writing a book about a "priest who dies." But shortly thereafter, the three friends find Hugo naked on his bed, dead of an apparent drug overdose, with a suitcase full of money by his bedside.
They succumb to the temptation of the suitcase's treasures, and the forces of greed take over and wreak havoc on the lives of the roommates.
The roommates dispose of Hugo's body in the woods, chop off his hands and legs, and smash his teeth to prevent identification. David is driven crazy by guilt, the friends plot against each other, and two thugs show up in search of the money.
While the film's characters suffer from a lack of depth that would have made their transformation from self-satisfied yuppies to base criminals all the more chilling, "Shallow Grave" remains an engaging thriller.
"At last," David Denby of New York Magazine wrote, "A truly wicked Scottish movie!"
