The true story of how a serial killer effects Ipswich England. The filmmaker took sexual quotes and used it and repetitive and musical ways did you pick the fears and fascination the locals had. It's very well done, fascinating to watch. The songs are very good. But ultimately, it trivializes a horrible subject that is cause a lot of pain

Very odd and very poor

Snippets of interviews about the Ipswich murders are turned verbatim into rather dour song - think The Arbor crossed with Sondheim. This concept is very challenging and I hadn't got my head round it even by the end and certainly did not come close to enjoying it. I could see the value though, especially in terms of the ensemble repeating and magnifying the meagre information and rumours spreading through the community. Let's be honest, I also would never have watched a film on this subject without a substantial distancing device (the opposite of the one-star-reviewers!)

Is it supposed to be a musical???

Completely innovative and enthralling. Certainly isn't universally appealing, but the way this work was conceived, constructed, and actualized is something to behold. Part docu-drama, part post-modern musical, and wholly and expertly crafted with complete dedication to its purpose.

Strange concept. But I loved the way the rhythm and cadence of natural speech was translated into music.

One of the most affecting musical movies I've seen. Creature Comforts the live action movie. A triumph of ambition.

I write as someone born and bred in Ipswich, 1959-. I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to make this travesty : we gave up as soon as the fake newsreaders, reading news about a fake Ipswich town centre, watched by residents of a fake London Road complete with gasometers (there are none here), started rapping ; it seemed to be a spoof of a musical form that was itself intent on demeaning / deriding the awful events that occurred. Pretty sick ; and just awful. Binned.

Based on the 2011 play of the same name, certainly not for "casual movie watcher" tastes but a beautifully choreographed experience of a film. Drama, comedy, musical, flowers, serial killings? Those expecting a court-case will be disappointed. Think "The Winslow Boy," a play (and film) about the effect of what's happening on those it affects. Colman and Fleetwood shine in their roles, as do those portraying The Media. "It Could Be Him" would be my favorite bit, as is "It's a Wicked Bloody World" and the rib-tickling "Cellular Material." Kudos to the creators. This was an entertaining, out-of-the-ordinary watch. For every bit that feels awkward, there's a dozen clever, uplifting ones.

Sorry -- couldn't stand the singing - if that's what you want to call it.

London Road is such an interesting widget of a film it would be hard to see through the gimmick of it's premise. Which is interesting because that's normally a problem encountered by 70s sci-fi movies like Westworld, Logan's Run, or Planet of the Apes, or even modern slasher films craving some relevance like Unfriended, Saw, or Final Destination, (which is actually a lot better than people give it credit for). A couple of genre's where that's not often levelled are musicals, and crime dramas, both of which this seems to be, with some of the pitch black farce of Dr. Strangelove. Despite this, London Road thrives off off inventive musical numbers, a self-knowing that never becomes ironic, and strong film making. London Road follows the true life tale of 5 murders in Ipswich, and the ensuing sense of the town turning upon itself, a la M. Doesn't sound like appropriate material for a musical? Well it's not, and to make it worse all the songs are taken from actual interviews done around the time of the murders, which leads to the ever classic chart topping banger, "everyone's very very nervous and um quite scared, basically". Occasionally that's very clear where some of the things that are said could only have been said to an interviewer which is very striking, and equally occasionally if not more frequently, the songs very accurately take what was actually said in very candid interviews and contextualises them in a way that makes them genuinely seem like they're part of some internal monologue. At the end of the film thy let you hear the audio from the actual interviews and it shatters the illusion in a way that is really quite striking. The way the songs are orchestrated are actually quite expertly done. I am informed this isn't unique to London Road, I haven't seen it but I am told that The Arbor does something similar, and occasionally the way the film tries to capture natural dialogue in song is eerily reminiscent of Les Misérables. The film is very dark, it has moments of real drama, it's a musical about murders infesting a small residential area. I'd say Blue Velvet the musical but that's only slightly over exaggerating. There are red herrings a plenty, and actually some of the casting choices act as red herrings purely because you think of how well known they are, they have to have a role like a villain that requires real acting. Also some of the things that Olivia Coleman, (Locke, The Lobster, Hot Fuzz), says is quite striking but also believable in a way where it's kind of awful that it's so believable. That being said, there are moments of genuine comedy, very very British comedy, where actually it's funny because of just how sort of middle-class-nevuax-riche-twat British it is, but there's also some genuine slapstick that means that I think I'm allowed to laugh at just how balls to the wall weird some of the musical numbers are. The presence of other jokes implies that some of the songs are played for jokes, and in a way that uneasiness of whether I'm meant to laugh helps the over all tension of the film. Whether that's meant to happen I HAVE NO IDEA but it works very well. In the end London Road is really entertaining, whether it's just through how quirky it is or the genuine cinematic craft there is to be found. It's well acted, well put together and a really good film to watch with friends. Trust me, you'll pick up the lyrics really, really easily.

wtf... this is a musical?

Very interesting movie. Worth seeing!

I remember when I used to sing my way through murders 5/5 - so nostalgic

Interview some people, transcribe it, repeat some keywords like crazy, add some tune on top of it.

London Road is not the first musical to be made about a real-life serial killer. But it may be the first to draw its poetic life-blood from the testimony of residents of a rural English town where five prostitutes were found murdered in 2006. Aside from a wicked moment or two when a leering movie star known for playing unsavory fellows shows up to throw us off the scent, this is not about the murderer. It's about the undoing - and remaking - of a community in its own words, owing more to Shirley Jackson than Masterpiece Theater. As it happens, the film was worked up from a National Theater workshop that grew into a hit stage play. This is not Shakespeare or Sheridan though, nor is it one of those lofty-lefty bits by West End playwrights with their gun sights fixed on the ruling class. London Road beams its sympathy, as well as an irreverent eye, on one lower-middle-class street in Ipswich, Suffolk, whose residents have long resented the sex workers plying their trade under the noses of the righteous and respectable. It helps to know going in that the cultural gulf between the British lower-middle and working class is wide and deep, in no small measure because only a smidgen of bad luck separates the one from the other. When the five women are found dead and the chief suspect - a transient truck driver dubbed the Ipswich Ripper - is arrested in a neglected house on the same street, London Road quickly becomes the focus of a media circus, followed by painful introspection within the community about its own claims to good character. All the residents are played by actors, one or two of whom you'll be able to name. Every line they utter - the script is by Alecky Blythe, who specializes in "verbatim theatre," a la Anna Deavere Smith - is taken from recorded interviews. So there's a documentary impulse at work here that's integral to British realism. But London Road is an entirely different animal from any film by Mike Leigh or Ken Loach or Stephen Frears. Based on the play by director Rufus Norris (Broken), London Road fairly bristles with visible technique. This is because it's a famously hellish prospect to adapt a stage play for the screen: You have to get the action out of the house, and you have to put a stop to all that declaiming. As with other filmed versions of National Theater productions that have brought the best of British theater to North America, a swooping, restless camera follows the players around their hitherto obscure town as they wring their hands about the identity of their resident serial killer. Paranoia blooms, and suspects appear in sinister close-ups that make you wonder not simply who the perp might be, but who the women's regular customers were. Once you get used to the film's most potent strategy - the incantatory repetition of dialogue in song and sing-song - it takes on the cadence of hypnotic poetry, a Greek chorus that picks out a billowing unease that only begins to spread following a trial verdict that was meant to bring closure. Yes, London Road will spruce itself up with a riot of color in hanging baskets and bunting and block parties and doors thrown open to neighbors. Yes, there will be jubilant togetherness - for everyone but the now under-employed prostitutes, who sound a desolate, lonely voice from the gasworks at the end of the street. At the climax, London Road administers a well-aimed kick to complacent liberalism when the heroic organizer of the community's rebirth, a single parent named Julie played by Olivia Colman, delivers a frank opinion about the streetwalkers' fate, while her teenaged daughter squirms on the couch beside her. As Shirley Jackson so well understood in her masterpiece, The Lottery, no community coheres without its sacrificial lamb.

I had no idea what the movie was going into it. But I saw Tom Hardy and I was like, "hey I'll give it a shot". I had no idea it was a musical though. The story was interesting and the performances for the most part good, but it didn't really do anything for me 60/100

Oh, a musical, how nice... not.

Superlative documentary musical, based on the National Theatre hit. The plot is negligible - although the background story of the murder of five prostitutes in Ipswich might indicate differently. It's about how a community living in one road process their shocked and fearful reactions and find catharsis in growing flowers. The entire cast perform this hugely challenging piece with extraordinary skill and subtlety.

Just bloody brilliant