DVD Review – Citadel (2012)

An agoraphobic father teams up with a renegade priest to save his daughter from the clutches of a gang of twisted feral children who committed an act of violence against his family years earlier.

Citadel is the sort of movie that thinks it’s saying a lot when really it’s not saying anything at all. It’s a paint-by-numbers Hoddie Horror with delusions of grandeur that at least boasts a great central performance. Messages are attempted and questions are raised to appear to be thought provoking, but the whole experience doesn’t quite work. 

The story centres around agoraphobic father Tommy (Aneurin Barnard) who is left to raise his baby daughter on his own when his wife is senselessly murdered by a group of hooded teens. As his condition worsens, he starts to be stalked by the returning hoodies who appear to be after his daughter. With the help of a seemingly crazy Priest (James Cosmo), the pair attempt to rid their town of these feral teens, who may be more evil than first thought.

As aforementioned, the film’s crowning glory is the central performance from Aneurin Barnard who exudes everything about being agoraphobic in an incredibly believable way. The make-up work on him really helps push the point further, but it is used to extenuate his performance rather than carry it. He’d shine through the scenery if they weren’t being chewed by James Cosmo as the Priest who tries to help save him and his daughter. It’s not enough that his character is simply there to spout exposition, but his performance is the kind of insane that is Nicolas Cage levels of laughable.

And while the central performance is far and away the best thing about the movie, Citadel also deserves a lot of credit for some of its horror elements. For as cliché and unoriginal as his Hoddie Beasts are, Foy creates a good amount of tension in a lot of their attacks without resorting to ridiculous shots of gore to make his audience uncomfortable. Citadel feels very brutal at times and while much of this is carried by Barnard’s exceptional performance, the movie does work in creating a good atmosphere.

However, for a movie that is only 85 minutes long, Citadel moves at a shockingly slow pace to the point where it feels like its never actually moving. There are only ever four characters worthy of note with only a handful of scenes between them that carry the plot forward. It appears as though Foy was using this time to build up the anxiety of Tommy and show just how terrified the outside world makes him, but it comes off a little dull – like a 30 minute short stretched over a feature length amount of time.

Foy has said in interviews that he got the idea for the movie after being mugged by a group of hooded teens when he was eighteen and he uses Citadel to delve into their world to discover what would make them do that. There are a few scenes in which the characters discuss whether these hoooded teens should be deemed “monsters” (both figuratively and literally) and how they ‘prey on fear’ (again, both figuratively and literally) and this is where it feels as though Citadel is trying (and failing) to force a message down our throats. Though it is admittedly written quite well, it’s very heavy handed and a little too on the nose for it to be a truly worthwhile attempt. Funnily enough, Foy’s experience for writing the movie is exactly the same as Joe Cornish’s when he wrote and directed Attack The Block – the difference being that Cornish got his point across better, and it was a much better film.

Citadel is not without its merits but the overall presentation is instantly forgettable. The lead performance is superb and, for a low budget movie, it’s shot very well with some good brutal moments. But the film fell apart at script level which thinks it’s saying something clever while it’s really nothing more than your standard ghost/monster flick. The balance doesn’t quite work and the story just isn’t that interesting or engaging.