Review of Tony (2010) by Ross M — 06 Feb 2011

So often, you get two or three really interesting elements which make an independent or lower budget film watchable or enjoyable, but there is perhaps some major drawback to the limits that have been placed on resources.

For instance, if you were a horror fan looking to be shocked, surprised, intellectually stimulated, entertained emotionally and impressed visually, you might find this all in recent films like, say, Splice or Black Death.

Then again, it would be impossible to completely lose yourself in those films because your disbelief is never suspended, like when a member of the public is bamboozled by some stunt that Derren Brown pulls on them.

When an actor channels something, perhaps something really dark, but something that seems so real and believable, as Peter Ferdinando does in Tony, you can completely lose yourself and start to treat a film almost as if it were a documentary.

Tony goes beyond horror - it's real life horror. I just sat in silence for a good half hour after seeing it and even people who don't particularly like the film because they think that doing so has some negative social connotation (like my sister), do the same.

It's a conversation killer. All you can do is laugh really. The general premise and scenario of Tony is based on a real case, that of Dennis Nielsen. This grounding in real sociopathic behaviour may be the source of its eery, chilling believability.

If a film like Zodiac is chilling because of the mysterious gaps which the audience are filling with their own imagination, Tony is chilling because it presents a reality to the audience which is as frightening, complete and convincing as anything you could imagine and at times, you start to wish it would leave a few more gaps e.

G. the scene where the annoying TV Licencing officer asks Tony if he has cable... which he does of course, just not the cable for the purpose intended. In fact, Tony has lots of things. He has orange squash.

He has a bed. He has a cupboard. He has VHS. He has neighbours. He has some pocket money. The problem is, what does he choose to do with these things that he has? Is he able to make choices any longer? This is one of my most surprising favourite films of all time, even more so because most people just find the idea of watching it wrong somehow.

It's much more profound than it looks, or probably than the makers had envisioned. Inexplicably brilliant.