Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Will Jewell
Starring: Kevin Guthrie, James Lance, Amber Rose Revah, Steve Speirs
I remember a time in the popular imagination when farms were considered
cosy pastoral ranges composed of cheerful ruddy faced farmers and
equally merry animals; gambolling lambs, stoic cows, cheeky pigs. That
homely representation, however, has long since been put out to pasture.
Did the sea change occur when telly soap
Emmerdale Farm became the suffix-less
Emmerdale (the same era which saw grimmer storylines, such
as a massive plane crash wiping out most of the characters), or when
broadcaster Alan Partridge laid the smackdown on British farmers around
the same time: ‘You have big sheds, but nobody's allowed in....’? With
their sun kissed, golden acres of swaying corn and gleaming machinery
the size of Autobots, American farms are a different prospect entirely;
think Children of the Corn or (my favourite)
Dark Night of the Scarecrow. British farms, with their unforgiving mud, expansive flatlands and
inbred denizens, are a far more unpleasant proposition; think, um,
Inbred, the first series of Happy Valley, our old pal Carl Medland’s outsider art
Paranormal Farm sequence and The Holding. No wonder really. Working farms are ramshackle arenas wherein
bloodshed and murder are essential features of daily business, a place
where life is cultivated in order to be tortured and eventually ended,
in an industry entirely dependent upon the suffering of animals simply
to provide human beings with a little snack now and again. There is
something deeply sinister and lawless about a farm - with their
remoteness, their subjective morality and liberal gun licenses (not to
forget their stupid tractors). You just cannot trust them. Walking
through a countryside in close proximity to ‘moy laaaaaaand’ with two
curious, mischievous cockerpoos is a bit akin to wandering around South
Central in gang territory. A whopping 72% of British land is owned by
these potential maniacs: sobering.
Close to home, then, for me, is Concrete Plans, a Welsh horror-thriller set upon a farm in the Brecon Beacons,
Will Jewell’s competent debut which uses its agricultural setting
as a muddied lens to view vying modes of masculinity. The plot centres
on a bunch of ne’er-do-well builders doing a cash in hand job for farm
owners Kevin Guthrie and Amber Rose Revah - a well turned
out couple whose good looks and finery emphasise the class divide which
powers this cruelly efficient film. Our builders are the usual rag bag-
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet through a glass darkly: the big hearted but
compromised foreman (played, endearingly, by Steve Speirs), the
loose cannon nephew, the old timer on his uppers and a Slavic immigrant
looking for honest work. ‘We’re all f**king immigrants round here,
butt’, the geezer cheerfully informs Viktor, emphasising the distantly
civil otherness of farm life. But, ahhhhh, maybe the two factions have
more in common than first appears: gothic signifiers such as an artfully
framed sheep skull indicate bucolic mortality, both sides keep secrets
from each other and themselves, and at the deeply ploughed root of it
all is money and murder, the intertwining functions of farming life.
You reap what you sow, and, after a slow burn start, it's feeding time
at the farm as alliances are split and man turns animal. Speaking of
Partridge, James Lance (seemingly channelling Stephen Toast)
skirts the narrative as another untrustworthy posho, becoming a vital
player in the dark farce of the final act. Horror infects the narrative
like a particularly gruesome case of blight, with nail guns yielded and
a live burial scene so unpleasant it would have Edgar Allen Poe reaching
for his trowel in glee.
Like the shady characters of the men it so gleefully portrays,
Concrete Plans is rough round the edges (how come
Merthyr’s finest Steve Spiers bemoans the time he took his sociopathic
nephew to the football, but the grown up agnate has a deep set, whiny
cockney accent?), but with its hyperbolic violence and scenery chewed
like cud, there are enough pastoral pleasures to make this a farmland
worth a trespass.
Concrete Plans is on UK Digital
from November 23rd.
