Next to being many other things, "K-Shop" first and foremost is an effectively harsh and confronting satire on England, and particularly how its culture and dignity completely deteriorated in the past two decades. It's abundantly clear that the film fiercely denounces the disgusting (but sadly very realistic and not exaggerated) British binge-drinking tragedies that occur every weekend, as well as all the vulgarities and embarrassment linked to them. But the obviously very cynical and embittered writer/director Dan Pringle simultaneously also criticizes many other shameless vices, most notably how disrespectfully English people treat the immigrants and how they stupidly idolize losers that basically didn't accomplish anything except for appearing in the media (like, for example, the winner of the "Big Brother" reality-TV show). But "K-Shop" is certainly also an insane black comedy and a gorier-than- expected horror/thriller, dealing with a variety of interesting themes including cannibalism, vigilante and modern day Sweeney Todd! Especially considering this is Dan Pringle's long- feature film debut, "K-Shop" definitely exceeded my expectations and – although it's about 30-40 minutes too long – I would label it as one of the more successful and recommendable horror movies to emerge from Britain in the last five years.
Salah Sabir is of Turkish descent, but born and raised in England and a successful student at a prominent London university. He has to interrupt his studies to return home to Bournemouth where his father, a devoted and ambitious kebab shop owner, suffers with his health. Before he properly recovers, Salah's father is killed following a banal dispute with a group of drunken party animals. Salah decides to stay a while and temporarily run the shop, but his contempt and oppressed hatred towards these idiotic binge-drinkers quickly escalates. He accidentally kills an aggressive customer in his deep fryer and sees no other option but to process the cadaver into the special kebab meat recipe! The K-shop becomes a huge hit in the late-night life, and since there are always more than enough imbecilic drunkards entering the shop to irritate Salah, he never runs out of meat
Salah runs the shop for 7 great years, but then he gradually gets into trouble as the number of missing person cases is immense and several people in his surrounding grow suspicious. In case it was Dan Pringle's primary objective to make a social statement, then
well
he certainly made his point! I'm neither a binge-drinker nor an Englishman, but I felt a surrogate sense of shame throughout nearly the entire movie. There's a massive amount of (stock-) footage depicting people drinking, fighting, misbehaving, vomiting, urinating and even fornicating in public. It's nasty and marginal, but you know it's the truth and that makes it rather depressing. The film isn't entirely flawless, neither. Two hours is definitely too long for this type of movie and it feels as if Pringle easily could have cut or shrunk several sequences and even entire sub plots. The irrelevant and slowly developing romance between Salah and the charming Sarah shouldn't have been included, for instance, especially since it never really goes anywhere concrete, and also the sub plot with his alert weekend helper Malik is quite redundant. The acting performances are terrific and the soundtrack contains a large number of exhilarating and inciting music.
