Over The Edge

By: Raymond Murray
In-House Review - Jun 16 2011

Tired of the same old gay indie? Are you a Joe Orton (Entertaining Mr. Sloane, What the Butler Saw, Loot) fan? Looking for an unusual, weird, demanding, off-kilter, funny and unpredictable film filled with gay characters, witty asides, a bungling policeman, a hysterical old lady neighbor and a bevy of corpses? Well, this is your kind of film!

Jason (Danny Bedford) is in a crisis. He won't go to work and stays holed up in his flat. But when his TV breaks, he is to call co-worker Richard (Sean Hart) to fix it. All is normal, except when Jason mentions that a friend of his may be dead in his bed. Instead of hightailing it out of the potential murder scene, Richard (who has the hots for Jason) instead not only checks the body (yes, dead) but also proposes a homemade autopsy. And when the scalpel cuts the flesh, these two young men are now in it together. But it is not just one body, a serial killer is roaming London's streets, but the bodies seem to all end up in Jason's flat.

Will Jason's claims of innocence calm the police? And will all these bodies affect the budding romance between the two men? A pitch black absurdist comedy that will delight those with a strange sense of humor.

By: Amos Lassen

"Over the Edge" proves that gay cinema can include many different genres and this is a very dark drama. Jason (Danny Bedford) is down with the blues-he hates his job as a photocopier repair man and he doesn't want to leave the house to go to work. He calls in sick, day after day and in actuality we see that by isolating himself he actually becomes ill. He isolates himself and loses sense of time and a perspective of who he is as well as of the world. He begins having periods of blackouts as they he has them more frequently, they include visions of murders that take place all over town.
He asks Richard (Sean Hart) to help him understand what is going on and Richard just happens to be a man he has a crush on. As they unravel the visions, sexual tension builds between the two men. As this happens, so do other things and the movie goes in a different direction.
What is surprising is that this is a comedy. British films are excellent at portraying eccentricity and that is one of the things we see here.