Low-budget Brit indie-pic looks to shake up the middle-classes in this taut suspense thriller/horror about a couple who are held hostage by a group of violent kids searching for their son.

From the opening scene in which Christine and Mike quietly eat their dinner, sniping and snapping at one another between bites of pie and sips of red wine, the film strives to make a political point about the dangers of being comfortable in your own home, and not appreciating what you’ve got until it’s gone. Or in this instance, until it is brutally smashed.

The smashing comes at the hands of a bunch of angry teenagers seeking revenge on their son who, they claim, grassed on a relative and put him in prison.

The tension is built up quite nicely by the early standoff scenes in which the gang genuinely seems to be an ordinary group of disenfranchised youths waiting to dish out some vigilante justice. With Christine and Mike trussed up you are always led to suspect that they group could fly off the handle at any minute, even if they initially seem more likely to watch DVDs than shank anyone.

The atmosphere is injected with moments of cinematic flair as director Paul Andrew Williams defies his small budget and sets out a series of shots that force us into the heightened sensual state of the hostages: jumping at kettle clicks, engulfed by the smoke of the weed the gang brings in and poring over every other sound (verbal or otherwise) for clues as to what might happen next.

The trouble is that what does happen next descends into a quick, predictable exercise in socio-political shock tactics. The class-warfare powder keg eventually explodes into an uncomfortable sequence of violence, confusion and abuse that is produced to an effective enough standard to have had me shifting uncomfortably in my seat, and even had me sweating a little at the inescapable, adrenaline-fuelled conclusion, but there just seems to be so little point in it.

Yes class tensions are a fertile area for social comedy, and for suspenseful drama, but when it descends into violent horror without really investigating the motives of the characters involved beyond generic stereotypes then it becomes little use as either a social commentary (too shallow) or a video nasty (not graphic enough).

It’s well shot, builds atmosphere well, and plays on some all-too-real fears. But it’s hard to see who would want to watch it or what they might gain, which is a real shame for a director who clearly has real talent.