Fractious family gatherings, especially those marking a holiday or life event, are a staple of Anglophone popular culture. What Ben Wheatley seems to have done in this comedy-drama is to take this situation, although with a larger than average cast, and assume the script for a comedy-drama would just write itself. But a New Year's Eve drinks party just isn't a sufficiently high-concept idea to sustain a satisfactory full-length movie without character arcs, dramatic tension, or a plot, which are sadly deficient here.
It is filmed in an exaggerated docu-soap style, with shaky camerawork, zip pans and sudden focus changes, which many viewers will no doubt find jarring or pretentious. It wasn't this, however, that I had a problem with, so much as the structure. With such a bewildering number of characters, little attempt to provide any back-story for them before the party, and no real central protagonist, it is difficult to care much about any of the people in this movie, and the dramatic potential of the set-up is largely squandered. For me, the only truly dramatic or intense moment was Colin's rant at his serial-adulterer, family-abandoning brother David, who has arrived with his German girlfriend, about a third of the way in.
I did not feel that the dialogue was particularly witty or incisive either - the only line that stuck in my mind was when Colin was setting up the sound system and says "we have to have a disco, because if they don't dance, they fight."
The themes of indebtedness and financial embarrassment are touched on and there's even a very perfunctory conversation between two characters about Brexit and party politics, but it doesn't go anywhere with these ideas, and in the subsequent Q&A I found the director's claim that he was making, as he put it, "a film about the 'now'", to be somewhat hollow.
The country house is a nice location visually, it has a consistent visual style and a strong cast, but I don't think I can give it more than 5/10.
