Movie Review: Citadel

I’m a sucker for a good horror flick. So when Citadel won the Midnighter Audience Award at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival, I was pretty psyched. Early reviews from SXSW were positive, and the trailer (shown below) looked great.

Here’s a synopsis of the movie:

Tommy Cowley (Aneurin Barnard) lives a quiet life in a decaying apartment complex with his highly pregnant wife. The couple is attacked one day by a group of hooded young thugs, and after a shocking act of violence, Tommy is left to raise his newborn daughter alone.

So shaken by the events that he’s developed extreme agoraphobia, Tommy alternates days hiding out indoors in his new flat from imagined threats and intense therapy sessions aimed at bringing him back to normalcy.

When the same hooded gang, seemingly intent on kidnapping his daughter, begins terrorizing his life again, he’s torn between his paralyzing fear and protective parental instinct. With the help of a vigilante priest who has uncovered the genesis of this ruthless, potentially supernatural gang, Tommy must overcome his fears and venture into the heart of the abandoned tower block known as the CITADEL to save his family.

The premise of the movie is good, but too much time is spent focusing on Tommy’s debilitating agoraphobia. The pace of the movie was painfully slow, only getting better towards the end when they finally infiltrate the citadel. It’s in these final scenes where the audience gets some much-needed action, along with some answers as to what the heck is actually going on.

Unfortunately, I thought it was too little too late. But it’ll at least give you some sense of closure, something that can’t be said about all movies these days..

If you’re a fan of the genre, you might very well enjoy Citadel. But for me, who had really high expectations going in, it just fell flat. It should be interesting to see how the public reacts to the movie when it opens this weekend.

Rating: C