Boyle's film bursts with energy and springs some deliciously macabre surprises, and he is rewarded with wonderful performances from Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston and Kerry Fox, whose characters are all outwardly ordinary yet inwardly strange.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 6, 2024

From the moment those electronic beats of Leftield start pounding on the soundtrack and Boyle’s camera begins racing around the cobbled streets of Edinburgh, the film announces itself as a propulsive thrill ride.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 10, 2024

A sour treat.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 9, 2024

It presents a funny comedy that shifts into a bleakly amusing criminal caper, before descending into what is more or less a home invasion thriller.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Oct 5, 2022

It is not the narrative that is so new, but the way it is told.

| Apr 21, 2022

Offering up such unlikable characters without apology is a risky move, but one that Shallow Grave manages to pull off.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 21, 2021

Danny Boyle does wonders with a small budget, and the suave, dense-hued look of his movie stays with you long after the horror has evaporated.

| Sep 7, 2020

What makes the film fascinating, and exciting, is its marriage of British setting and American, B-movie format. It is as if Edgar G Ulmer or Robert Siodmak had been reborn in Scotland.

| Nov 29, 2017

The violence in the film, in particular, is briskly and harshly managed, without either half-heartedness or gloating. But a little further along, cogency starts falling apart for good.

| Nov 15, 2017

An almost astonishingly interminable thriller...

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 18, 2016

I'm not surprised that in my youth I thought Shallow Grave was a pretty cool movie. What surprises me now is that the adults at the time gave this ridiculous movie a pass.

| Original Score: 3/10 | Aug 21, 2012

While it is not a great film, it is a good first film, amply demonstrating Boyle's catchy visual flair and rat-a-tat sense of tempo, as well as Hodge's ear for dialogue and intuitive sense of character dynamics

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 22, 2012

Danny Boyle's glittering, deadpan, nihilistic little thriller, a nasty Scottish cousin to such amoral specialty films as Pulp Fiction, The Grifters, and The Last Seduction

| Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2011

But even if the admittedly shallow Grave is short on emotional substance, it's so rich with cinematic style and post-Tarantino references–not to mention disorienting sound and crackling Scots accents–that most viewers will happily dig the whole thing.

| Jul 7, 2010

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 21, 2008

At some point, ordinary human compassion must take up the slack. Boyle isn't a zippy enough director to make up for what's missing. No one is.

| Original Score: C | Sep 23, 2007

This stylish, exhilarating feature debut Scottish director Boyle shows impressive command over the film medium. It's new type of British film, more influenced by Tarantino and the Coen brothers than any British tradition--Boyle is a talent to watch.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 1, 2007

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 18, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 8, 2005

Impressive cast fails to redeem rather overrated movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 27, 2005