Review: Inbred (18)

The clue to Inbred is in the title. Add the telling comment: “There’s some round these parts that care not for strangers” by the landlord of The Dirty Hole (the quaintly-named village hostelry) and this is not somewhere to blithely stray into. Thus it is that the do-gooder team leader, his laid-back assistant and a quartet 
of kids get a rip-roaring welcome from the landlord and sundry rampaging local yokels, cannibals and chainsaw-wielding psychos.

Taking its inspiration from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, An American Werewolf in London, 
Straw Dogs and Night of 
the Living Dead, Inbred combines gruesome 
shocks with genuine 
humour. It even has a nifty song-and-dance number courtesy of Seamus O’Neill, the host of the Dirty Hole who likes to put on a show.

From the same genre as Simon Sprackling’s deliriously demented Funny Man, Inbred offers death by chopper, death by horse, even death by faeces. Chandon embraces old-style visual effects to lend the proceedings a distinctive ‘80s vibe as the film enters Grand Guignol territory.

And it works perfectly. 
Jo (This is England) Hartley fares well as a spunky lass determined to survive and Emmerdale star Dominic Brunt has fun as a nutter named Podge. But the film’s stand-out performance comes courtesy of veteran Seamus O’Neill. This one has to be seen to be believed. Shot on location in Thirsk, it proves that classic British horror is alive and twitching.