Every once in a while, an exciting British talent emerges from nowhere, searing on to our memory with a work of audacity and invention.

Two years ago, Paul Andrew Williams was that saviour with his impressive debut, London To Brighton, an explosive thriller about a prostitute and an 11-year-old girl on the run from a gun-toting pimp. What the film lacked in budget it made up for in blistering performances from a largely unknown cast, taut direction and elegant scripting.

Needless to say, Williams's follow-up arrives with a huge amount of expectation. Sad to say, The Cottage falls woefully short of his first film, awkwardly mixing stomach-churning horror and black humour without a firm grasp on either.

Reece Shearsmith (from The League Of Gentlemen) is cast as the dithering hero, a supposedly comic counterweight to Andy Serkis's snarling partner in crime, a role he could play in his sleep - and possibly does, in this snoozefest.

When Serkis isn't drifting off, we certainly are, despite regular doses of grisly violence - impalement, decapitation and dismemberment. Bickering brothers David (Serkis) and Peter (Shearsmith) hope to get rich quick by kidnapping gangster's daughter Tracey (Ellison) then milking her old man, Arnie, for the ransom money. All hell breaks loose as Tracey turns the tables on her captors.

Tension evaporates early on, pacing is sluggish and characters are screaming caricatures who grate on our nerves so badly, we're cheering in the aisles they get hacked them to pieces.

If you can be bothered to stay behind until the end of the credits, you'll be rewarded' with an additional scene with Tracey's father.

Comedy/Horror. Andy Serkis, Jennifer Ellison, Reece Shearsmith, Steve O'Donnell, Logan Wong, Jonathan Chan-Presley.