In this Blackpool-set thriller, semi-retired wide boy Greg (Craig Kelly) is feeling bored and stifled by the routine of fatherhood with an infant daughter and a constantly critical wife, Gemma (Maimie McCoy). On Halloween night, his brother Dan (played by Craig Kelly’s real-life brother, Dean Lennox Kelly) shows up claiming to have killed the son of local gangster queenpin Miss Ferguson (Frances Barber, with a mouth full of curse words, cockney diphthongs and scenery splinters) in a hit-and-run accident. Desperate, Dan begs for Greg’s help.
But hold on a sec – is this all a staged scam, designed to jolt Greg into appreciating the pleasures of everyday life, as if the MacGuffin in David Fincher’s The Game were a rehab intervention? Or perhaps it’s all a hallucination or vision, given the early references to Greg’s putative psychic powers and tendency to smoke skunk?
To be honest, the whole shooting match plays more like some kind of dare played for laughs and regional arts funding, given the disregard for dramatic logic and slapdash technical credits. A few moderately well known faces – including Jason Flemyng, Kris Marshall, Jamie Sives, Hugo Speer – have been roped in for cameo turns.
If you stumble on this in the middle of the night, it’s a mildly amusing, only moderately sexist diversion from the chaos of life these days. It’s a shame better use wasn’t made of the delightfully monikered, extremely photogenic Jessamine-Bliss Bell, who crops up first as a naked human sushi platter but still manages to outact Kelly while barely moving a muscle.
• Trick Or Treat is available on digital platforms.
