Some movies are gloriously bad.

This is not one of them.

An English Independent movie – this film tries the jig of trying to be something like Bronson. A something else.

The title sequence is very professional, quite beautiful, – flames and credits interweaving through a bare knuckle fight.

This quickly opens up a style that only reminds of a Crimestoppers reenactment video.

It is quickly apparent this film doesn’t know what it wants to be.

The main thread of the story is a couple of city boys on motorbikes out in the countryside, seeking some sort of adventure holiday that will help them escape the loss of their youth.

It quickly begins to make no sense.

The lads pick a fight in a bar they were getting help in with a good bit of racist abuse. Going against the laws of intelligence and just anything.

They escape.

They camp in a field and wake up to find Travellers there.

Just one caravan though.

These leads to one of the characters – the same one we saw in the bar randomly telling a bar of locals they were all sister fuckers – going over to the caravan and spending quite some time just kicking it. This of course leads to a conveniently placed can of paint being retrieved and ‘Pikey Scum’ being written on the side of the caravan. Granted there is a small bit of a humour – in that one of the other characters has to tell get him to correct his misspelled hate graffiti.

And this senseless piece of bigotry, really, is where the movie kicks off.

It could have been possible that we had another Eden Lake on our hands. Wonderfully executed, but terribly flawed by the fact that well, defying all known levels of human logic, the characters brought almost all of what happened to them on themselves.

This, however, is no Eden Lake.

It feels as if it was written by a drunk.

It wheels about wildly, unsure of even its own opinion.

For a second, we have a scene around a fire that looks a lot like art indie theatre done for screen – then its back to Crimestoppers.

It also has the mindset of a drunk – a bad, mean minded drunk that will be abusing someone one moment, then crying about how their father never loved them the next.

The sheer, cliched hatred expressed for Travellers and their culture through the beginning of the film, you would want to have a wider scope, but upon meeting the Travellers, they are portrayed as largely stupid, women beating, violence loving throw backs who can’t escape what’s in their blood.

Of course, like a drunk, the film swings about to attempt to rail on the racism endemic against Travellers and how they are viewed, but just as one of the characters is getting his redemptive view of Travellers, the female lead mentions how her brothers will beat her.

It tries hard to counter itself, to spin on a dime, but can’t.

You Can’t Outrun What’s In Your Blood.

That’s the tagline of the film. It just does not seem sure what it wants to be. At first it’s a trap them and kill type horror with a twist. Then, really, all it turns out to be is a settled Traveller finding out that he can’t escape his Traveller genes – which is basically a love of beating the shit out of other humans with his bare fists; which, as he is a Traveller, is obviously in his blood and thus completely inescapable.

Bollocks.

Somewhere through the fog, they appear to be trying to make the toff asshole property guy a voice of redemption. Yet he is written and acted like a complete sleaze ball whose opinion you’d smashmouth. It is him we return to just before the credits for some clubfoot, after thought poignancy that barely makes any sense.

Who the hell let this be made, let alone funded the damn thing?

It has – just one saving grace. The special effects are at times pretty damn awesome. There is a knife to the throat and a headshot there that stand to rival anything else in other movies. And the fight scenes are very well executed – something that probably helps when you have ex-MA fighters in your cast.

All in all – if you want to generally shout at your screen, listen to idiots try very hard to do what is basically parody accent of a Traveller (seriously, Brad Pitt was better), feel moments of guilt as the film tries like a snare caught badger to get free and redeem itself, only to fail and saw through it’s own flesh again and again and again…

Then Travellers is your movie.

Marginally better than the disaster that was Hush.

And just a touch above the calamity that was F.

In other words.

Dogshit.