Hyena

Get ready for gore with Hyena, director Gerard Johnson’s latest gruesome offering, which premiered this year at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (nominated for Best British Feature film) and will receive a UK release in March next year.

Starring Peter Ferdinando (Starred Up, A Field in England), Stephen Graham (This is England, Boardwalk Empire) and Neil Maskell (Utopia, Kill List), this nihilist crime drama from the director of Tony (2009) follows Michael Logan, a corrupt London copper, played with dark ferocity by Ferdinando, who finds himself in deep trouble when he gets embroiled in the underworld of Albanian organised crime.

The film, which follows in the vein of Bad Lieutenant (1992), has been compared in its predilection for violence to the work of directors such as Abel Ferrara and Nicolas Winding Refn, with some reviewers finding the bloodshed a little too excessive. The actors, however, are keen to suggest that Hyena isn’t about the shock-factor, but a realistic look at the issues concerning modern, sprawling cities like London, where so much can remain hidden. Stephen Graham, who plays an old adversary of Logan, recently noted that much of what went into the film came from Johnson’s conversations with ex-policemen and that the film covers ‘the underbelly of what’s really happening today.’ Ferdinando goes on to explain that ‘it is quite controversial but… we’re trying to make a film that depicts these crimes how they really are, without pulling any punches. We wanted it to look as authentic and as real as possible.’

With hair-raising sound design and unsettling, eerie aesthetics from newcomer cinematographer Benjamin Kracun this film is undoubtedly designed to frighten, but it also leaves its viewers with something to contemplate, once the pulse stops racing.