This is a fucking incredible film. From opening credits to the last frame, it is utterly gripping. I loved it so much I wanted to kill every last person who texted me while I was trying to watch it. I almost turned off my goddamn phone and I never turn off my phone.
It's labeled a horror film but I'm hesitant to call it that for the same reason I'm hesitant to label it foreign. It's British. That's not really foreign, though if you had trouble understanding the dialogue in Snatch you may want to throw on the subtitles anyway. Anyway, for me a horror film embodies the question "What if?" It makes you question the noise you heard in another room or whether that creepy old lady at the bank is actually a vengeance-mongering curse-leveling gypsy or just senile.
Okay, weird side note: I was halfway through the previous sentence and rocking out to Smash Mouth on my iTunes when there actually was a strange noise in the other room. It wasn't a lamia, though, it was just the UPS guy with my new duvet cover.
Back to the point, Dead Man's Shoes has no "What if?" factor for me. I do not have a frisson of delicious fear that some gun-wielding maniac in a WWII-era gas mask is going to hunt me down. This is because I don't make a point of tormenting the mentally disabled. If you do, then maybe you would consider this a horror movie and rightly so, you despicable jerk.
So, no, I wouldn't call this a horror film. A morality film, maybe. A film about the enduring force of familial love, definitely. It will certainly make you wish you spent more time with perhaps the more vulnerable members of your own clan. Most Netflix movies I am content to view once and return. This one I plan to add to my collection. It is THAT good.
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