Shallow Grave

Shallow Grave (1994) starts with three people sharing a flat in Edinburgh. They take in a fourth as a lodger. Days later he is found dead in his room with a suitcase of money under the bed. The three decide to keep it, and from that decision on they stop trusting each other. It is Danny Boyle's first feature. He had come from television, and this together with Trainspotting is counted among the films that revived British cinema in the nineties. It is also Ewan McGregor's arrival, alongside Christopher Eccleston and Kerry Fox. Channel Four Films and PolyGram financed it with 2.5 million dollars and it was shot in thirty days. The budget was so tight that props were auctioned off to pay for enough film stock. It is set in Edinburgh and was shot mostly in Glasgow, because the Glasgow Film Fund provided a grant of 150,000 pounds. The hospital scenes were filmed at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley. It took 5.2 million pounds in Britain and 19.8 million dollars worldwide, and was the most commercially successful British film of 1995. It runs 93 minutes. Good for: black comedy, stories about trust collapsing, and early Boyle. Less good for: the violence is sudden and unpleasant and the scenes with the body are detailed. None of the three is sympathetic, which is deliberate. The cleverness of the ending outstrips the rest of the story.