A British thriller about a school under siege by vengeful hoodies doesn't quite hang together, writes Peter Bradshaw

• Peter Bradshaw
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 September 2010

Here's a horror-thriller on a shrewdly chosen, contemporary theme: Robert Anderson (David Schofield) is a harassed, overworked, sharp-tongued teacher in a tough comprehensive. One day, he returns an essay to the nastiest piece of work in his class, marked "F" for fail – instead of the approved, politically correct "RS" for resubmission – and lets the knucklehead have some choice putdowns, to general laughter from the class. The boy punches him, storms out and some months later is back with his hoodie mates to uncork an Assault-on-Precinct-13-type nightmare. It's a nice idea: though I'm tempted to say an even more interesting idea would be the teacher subjecting the hoodies to a siege ordeal. There's a classy cast, including Ruth Gemmell as the headteacher and Juliet Aubrey as Robert's wife, but those faceless demon-hoodies seem to belong to a more supernatural kind of thriller to me, and slightly undermine the realist impact. The ending is interesting and unexpected, but it gives this (relatively brief) feature a truncated, sawn-off feel. F doesn't quite work, but it aims at something interesting.

harassed : zmęczony, znękany

hoodie : zakapturzona postać

knucklehead : głupek

resubmission : tu: do ponownego przedłożenia, do zaliczenia

shrewdly : trafnie

truncated : okrojony, skrócony

uncork : uwalniać

vengeful : mściwy

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