John Chard

The Salvage Savage. Salvage is directed by Lawrence Gough and written by Colin O’Donnell and Alan Patterson. It stars Neve McIntosh, Shaun Dooley and Linzey Cocker. It’s Christmas Eve, The Wirral, Merseyside, and 14 year old Jodie is reluctantly spending Christmas with her estranged mother, Beth. But family strife is to be the last of their worries, for soon this small cul-de-sac in the North West of England will become a battle for survival as something is loose and on the kill, and the army has got itchy trigger fingers… It’s perfectly understandable that some horror lovers come out of watching Salvage immensely disappointed at getting yet another spin on the “creature/infected human/zombie on the loose” formula. There’s nothing exactly fresh here in terms of plotting, but considering the minimalist budget and sparsity of production aids, first time director Lawrence Gough has done a bang up job with this picture. The suspense factor is high, where McIntosh’s (excellent) frantic mother tries to stay alive long enough to rescue her daughter from a house just across the road. Something which sounds simple in premise, but as the film unfolds, this proves to be a tense, fraught and nail biting mission. While the fact that the two main characters have been humanised, deep flaws and all, puts added spice to the survivalist horror. As Mcintosh and Dooley (very good), the latter a one night stand liaison forced into the battle for survival along with some self examination, prowl around with fear and stoic bravado, themes of paranoia, prejudice and military over-kill slide easily alongside the jolts and blood. Nothing is crowbarred in here, the gore is kept in check and the politico rumblings remain just that, rumblings and not vociferous lectures over the loud speakers. The mystery element remains strong as well, where it’s so nice to see a fledgling director not playing the hand too early. Once the “reveal” comes we are in frantic territory as we literally hurtle through stalk the prey land and finish with a finale that is bleak and deserves credit for having the audacity. It’s badly under valued on the big internet movie sites, which is a crying shame, because it is damned by familiarity of other genre pieces, where the low budget skill in the film making process doesn’t appear to be taken into consideration. No this is not a terrifying and breakneck paced picture, but it has its moments without doubt and certainly deserves better appraisal notices than those afforded the likes of Creep and the recently awful Storage 24. 7/10