Review of Frenzy (2015) by Matthew D — 25 Jul 2018

Hitchcock returns to England for one of his most lived-in movies, gone are the well-to-do middle classes or landed gentry of many a past production to the working-class world of his early movies (and his own roots).

Instead we have a positively grimy London with a grisly killer on the loose, where the Hitchcock takes 'the wrong man' plot out for one last spin and takes it to the logical extreme of where it can go.

On the way he peppers the proceedings with his trademark humour and there is a nice undercurrent that captures the antagonism of the time between the elder generation that grew up in his heyday of the 40's and 50's and the new 'debauched' generation of the 70's, although it's clear which side he favours.

It remains amazing how much sympathy Hitchcock can elicit for such unlikeable characters, at one point even for his most repugnant villain. The problem, however, is that the protagonist is dislikeable almost to the point of losing all support and there's a nastiness that pervades the proceedings, some of which enders an uneasiness that adds to the suspense, but often simply feels unpleasant.