Citadel Blu-ray Review
Please, do fence me in.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 28, 2013
It's particularly ironic, if also obviously intentional, that
Citadel, a horror thriller about the debilitating effects of
agoraphobia is one of the most claustrophobic films in recent memory. Set in a dystopian
present that is oddly
reminiscent of the
future depicted in
Dredd 3D,
Citadel explores the tormented world of Tommy (Aneurin Barnard), a young Irish man
who, in the film's terrifying opening sequence, watches helplessly from a descending elevator as his
very
pregnant wife is viciously attacked by a bunch of hooded kids. By the time Tommy is able to extricate himself from the
elevator and ascend several flights of stairs, his wife lies mortally wounded in the hall of their decrepit tenement
building. She lapses into a coma, but a healthy baby girl is able to be delivered. Several months later, life support is
withdrawn from the woman and she dies, leaving Tommy to fend even more by himself to bring up his infant daughter
alone. The attack and its aftermath has left Tommy a walking bunch of neuroses, barely able to walk outside, and a
poster child for "victim stance", as is described at a support group he struggles valiantly to attend. In the meantime,
Social Services are threatening to take his daughter, his only real reason for even trying to do anything, away from him.
Citadel exists in a slightly surreal world that
seems to be grounded in the grimy everyday reality of
Glasgow and Dublin (where the film was shot) but which has at least one major unreal element: when we finally get a
good look at the gang of kids who attacked Tommy's wife and who end up kidnapping Tommy's young daughter, they're
not simply "feral", as the film's press material describes, they're almost quasi-zombies, with glazed over eyes and
horribly disfigured faces. If that just slightly removes the film from a more ostensibly realistic feeling, it doesn't dilute
the almost palpable horror that Tommy experiences, and in fact may increase it.
The first two thirds of
Citadel slowly but steadily builds its stifling ambience, with Tommy struggling to deal with
his
agoraphobia while at the same time remaining determined to keep his child safe—but from
what? Is there
really a threat, or has Tommy's mind become addled by imagined terrors? Writer-director Ciaran Foy highlights
Tommy's isolation by keeping the character separate from virtually any other character, at least in the early going. This
is
particularly notable in an example where Tommy and his daughter are riding a dilapidated city bus that unexpectedly
stops
well short of Tommy's destination with an announcement by a disembodied voice that due to safety concerns the bus
line
doesn't go any further. Tommy is obviously distraught and in a panicked state begs the driver for more information, but
Foy never lets us even see that there
is a driver—it's as if Tommy is talking (or
screaming) to himself.
When Tommy
does finally interact with other characters, things don't always go swimmingly. While his
relationship with Marie (Wunmi Mosaku), a nurse who cared for Tommy's now late wife, is actually pretty healthy, at
least by Tommy's standards, he isn't really able to fully invest in what is obviously Marie's romantic interest in him, due
to his increasing fears. Tommy's interactions with a foul mouthed Priest (James Cosmo) are decidedly more problematic.
The Priest, who officiates at the burial service for Tommy's wife, first berates the young man for being such a wimp, and
then almost chuckles when he tells Tommy that the people who killed his wife are obviously going to be coming back for
his daughter as well.
The Priest is a bit more, well, Fatherly to a young blind boy named Danny (Jake Wilson) who is in his care, and in the
film's suffocating final act, the Priest, Danny and Tommy return to the tenement building where Tommy's nightmares
began and where he's certain the gang of so-called feral children have taken his infant daughter.
Citadel then
becomes a kind of examination of how far one father is willing to go to overcome his fears. There's a sort of relentless
quality to this last act, and it's undeniably gruesome in a couple of moments, anchored by Barnard's quite viscerally
effective performance which aptly depicts just how wounded Tommy is. But this is also when we finally get a (more or
less) good look at the "feral" children, which is when
Citadel indeed starts to mimic
Dredd in a perhaps
unexpected way, but introducing, whether intentionally or not, a science fiction element which seriously undercuts the
otherwise horrific reality that Tommy is forced to face.
Citadel Blu-ray, Audio Quality
Citadel's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio is superb in virtually every way, shape and form, full of spooky (if
contextually irrelevant) sound effects and some
really aggressive LFE that ably recreates Tommy's fear of things
that go
boom in the night. Fidelity is exceptional and dynamic range is extremely wide. Surround activity is very
smartly and moodily placed throughout the film, especially in sequences where we're kind of "inside" Tommy's head as he
reacts to the increasing horror of the feral children. The only niggling complaint some may have with this track is the
really thick Irish accents of most of the principals which, when coupled with the absence of any subtitles, makes
understanding some of the dialogue more than a bit of a challenge. Otherwise, though, this is a sterling track that is easily
one of the most effective horror audio mixes in recent memory.
Citadel Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Citadel is undeniably effective quite a bit of the time, really smartly focusing on Tommy's debilitating fear rather than
the outright shocks of consistent violence. There
is some extremely gruesome violence in
Citadel, mind you,
but it only serves to comment on Tommy's state of mind. Where
Citadel goes seriously off the rails is in its depiction
of the so-called "feral" children, who, once we finally get something akin to a good look at them, seem awfully like genetic
mutants or (heaven forfend) zombies. Otherwise, though,
Citadel is quite well done and should certainly provide
some requisite chills for those who like this sort of film. The video here is kind of middling, part of which may be intentional,
but the audio is outstanding. Supplemental material isn't extremely copious, but what's here is quite interesting.
Citadel comes
Recommended.
