Carnage

Carnage is a film for people who drink scotch. Because that’s what experiencing this film is like: a short, eye-watering shock to the system, which might leave several viewers reeling. But once you’ve taken a swig of its slow-burning, tar-black comedy, it’s an absolute hoot.

If you like your comedies pin-sharp, full of stinging banter and satire, then Carnage is like Christmas come early. Two children are involved in a bit of a scrap, and both sets of parents gather to discuss the matter. Things begin normal enough: awkward small-talk and concern over how to address the rift between the kids. But over the course of an afternoon, things gradually become ugly – wonderfully ugly – as underhand snide remarks give way to serious venom, interspersed with possessions being thrown around, alcohol being broken out (yep, there’s the scotch…), and the most spectacularly explosive vomiting scene in recent cinema.

The film is essentially eighty minutes – filmed more or less in real time – of watching these characters spiral into malicious verbal warfare, and it makes for darkly gleeful viewing. In a film wherein the setting and storyline are firmly anchored, the performances take centre stage, and all four cast members perform magnificently.

Kate Winslet and John C. Reilly are both outstanding, but it’s Christoph Waltz and Jodie Foster who really linger in the memory. The former’s incessant BlackBerry digressions simply get more and more hilarious as the tension mounts, and there is great pleasure to be derived from seeing the temper of Jodie Foster’s dominatrix stretch like an elastic band.

For a film shot entirely in one location, with the same four characters, all pretty much in one continuous scene, Carnage never sinks below enthralling, or wickedly hilarious. Come for the carnage, stay for the laughter. And the hamster anecdote.