Shallow Grave

Empire Caroline Westbrook

This, the debut feature from acclaimed TV director Danny Boyle, is the best British thriller for years, a chilling and claustrophobic heart-stopper centring on a moral dilemma destined to fuel many a dinner party conversation.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

In his big-screen directing debut, British film maker Danny Boyle demonstrates wit, intelligence and economy of style.

Variety Derek Elley

Shallow Grave, a tar-black comedy that zings along on a wave of visual and scripting inventiveness.

TV Guide Ethan Alter

Danny Boyle's effective psychological thriller.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

This is a fairly accomplished first feature -perky, visually inventive, and unusually nast

Wall Street Journal Julie Salamon

This clever thriller has the juiced-up, hyperactive feel of a rock video. [07 Mar 1995]

Austin Chronicle Adrienne Martini

Boyle, MacDonald, and Hodge honed this wonderful coupling of music, visuals, and clever words, as well as a strange affection for toy babies, in their first film.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Taken as a whole, Shallow Grave is a reasonably enjoyable (for those captivated by this sort of thing) black comedy/noir thriller that justifies at least a portion of the praise being heaped upon it from overseas.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Black comedy and film noir are around one another smartly and wickedly in Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave, a tense, twisty Scottish-made thriller that's going to break out of Glasgow in a big way. [24 Feb 1995]

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Just sit back, plug in, and enjoy the shocks - so adroitly administered, so sweetly sensational. [24 Feb 1995]

Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown

Danny Boyle's glittering, deadpan, nihilistic little thriller.

San Francisco Examiner Scott Rosenberg

Smart and unsentimental as it is, Shallow Grave is more than a little forbidding.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

There's something in Shallow Grave that is admirable, beyond its obvious display of youthful talent. [24 Feb 1995]

The New York Times Janet Maslin

A sky-high level of misanthropy overwhelms his film in ways that prove more sour than droll, despite the presence of skillful actors and a bizarrely enveloping plot.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

McGregor is a real charmer, a young Malcolm McDowell with a Scottish lilt; Brain Tufano's photography manages to be both rich and stark at once; Hodge's script has some genuinely arch lines. [03 Mar 1995]

Washington Post Hal Hinson

Boyle's characters, too, are young and fresh and promisingly rude - especially McGregor's Alex - but they become less and less interesting as the movie progresses.

Washington Post Desson Howe

This is exactly the kind of weird, sardonic texture the movie is aiming for - and unfortunately, most of it occurs in the first half of the story.

Los Angeles Times Peter Rainer

Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge (who is a physician!) keep the action spurting forward, but their approach is oblique. We seem to be catching the odds and ends of scenes; it's as if the filmmakers wanted to make a movie in which all the expected high points were skimped.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

All of the materials are in place for a film that might have pleased Orwell. But somehow they never come together.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

This pitch-black comedy is less lurid than its title, but director Danny Boyle ultimately fritters away his psychologically rich story in a horror-flick finale.