Dan Pringle

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about K-Shop is how much it feels like a short film that states its point early on, then just keeps going out of inertia. Largely set in a kebab restaurant in a British city where violent drunks come out at night, K-Shop quickly takes on a few social issues and pushes them into horror. Our protagonist is shattered when his father, the restaurant owner, is killed by drunken hooligans, and soon vows revenge. Horror movie-grade revenge, that is: not simply content to kill, he has to butcher, cook and serve his victim to the other drunks invading his restaurant every night. The film could have ended with a shot of carved-up kebab meat – but then it keeps going for another hour, not really adding much to an already trite idea. While writer-director Dan Pringle doesn’t do that badly in the earlier part of the film and later on in executing his premise with some skills that go beyond its narrative emptiness, K-Shop feels increasingly pointless even as the sadistic murders pile up – going from vigilantism to cannibalism is not the most surprising progression, and even K-Shop’s anger at the United Kingdom’s binge-drinking culture isn’t quite enough to set the result apart from its biggest flaws.