"Sleeps six bloody comfortably."
The Cottage is a 2008 British darkly comedic Slasher Movie starring Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith.
Two brothers desperate for cash have abducted a mob boss's daughter, bungling it the entire way. The mob boss himself has hired a few hitmen to exterminate the kidnappers and rescue his daughter. The daughter has turned the tables on our protagonists and taken one of them hostage. This caper only gets more complicated when a psychotic farmer with an axe starts killing everybody.
This film contains examples of:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Farmer is able to decapitate Tracey with a shovel.
- Agony of the Feet: Peter gets half of a foot chopped off by the Farmer. Later, Andrew steps in a bear trap (twice).
- Alas, Poor Villain: It's hard not to feel sorry for the Farmer as he's slowly strangled to death with a rope. Subverted when he turns out to be Not Quite Dead.
- And This Is for...: David takes this up to eleven after punching Andrew:"This is for everything you've ever done."
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: David and Peter are constantly bickering, but when the Farmer abducts Peter, David is legitimately concerned for his life, and when the Farmer kills David, Peter is outraged.
- Axe-Crazy: The Farmer (literally).
- Beauty Equals Goodness: The Farmer was apparently a normal man until he was horribly deformed in a freak accident, then he went insane and started murdering people.
- Big Bad: The unnamed, psychotic farmer killing everybody.
- Big Bad Wannabe: David is a rare example of the Villain Protagonist being this, as he is the mastermind of the kidnapping plot, but his plan is ruined by the stupidity of his partners and he's upstaged by a psychotic farmer who starts killing everybody.
- The Cameo: Doug Bradley makes one as one of the villagers.
- Creepy Souvenir: The Farmer keeps the heads of all his victims in his pantry.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Muk Li San and Chun Yo Fu seem to be the Big Bad Duumvirate of the film, being the two hitmen Arnie sent to fetch his daughter, but the Farmer makes short work of them halfway through the film, causing the film to take a Genre Shift from crime comedy to Slasher Movie.
- Downer Ending: After being rendered the sole survivor of our victim pool with the death of his brother, Peter manages to seemingly kill the Farmer. In the course of these events, Peter falls into the basement, which is closed with the Farmer's corpse and a large dresser on top. Unable to escape through the cellar door, Peter decides to investigate the rest of the room for an escape route, only to find the Farmer's equally insane and cannibalistic family down there, who have decided that he's their next lunch. The ending reveals that the Farmer survived his fight with Peter, too.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Arnie is the ruthless head of a group of London Gangsters, and his daughter is the one our protagonists kidnap, but the murderous farmer is the more immediate threat.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The first half is a Black Comedy about a bungled kidnapping. The second half is a Slasher Movie where a psychotic farmer slashes his way through the criminals.
- Hillbilly Horrors: A psychotic farmer kills anybody who enters his land.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The Farmer has hands in his freezer.
- Mafia Princess: David and Peter kidnap one in order to get a ransom from her dad. Unfortunately for them, she's perfectly capable of fighting back.
- The Mole: David manages to get Arnie's son Andrew in on the scheme to kidnap the mobster's daughter.
- Off with Her Head!: How Tracey dies.
- One Last Job: David was hoping for this kidnapping job to net him enough money to retire in the tropics.
- Only Sane Man: Of the three kidnappers, David is the only one who is remotely competent.
- Outside-Genre Foe: The Farmer fits into The Cottage like Jason Voorhees fits into Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.
- The Place
- Reference Overdosed: The movie deliberately makes use of many classic Slasher Movie tropes. The director has been quoted as proudly stating that "there's nothing in it that's not been done before".
- Sequel Hook: The Stinger shows the mob boss showing up at the cottage and The Farmer being very much not dead.
- Shout-Out:
- When first entering the farm, David quips that Old MacDonald of the nursery rhyme lives there.
- The Farmer rips Andrew's spine out of his back and roars like the Predator.
- Shovel Strike: Peter and the Farmer both use a shovel as a weapon at some point in the movie.
- Sickening "Crunch!": One is heard when Peter sets David's broken nose back into place.
- Sir Swears-a-lot Tracey, the Mafia Princess the brothers kidnap, does not come quietly.
- Spoiler Cover: The Farmer's appearance at the Halfway Plot Switch would have been more of a shocking twist if we didn't know what he looked like all along.
- Stupid Crooks: Peter and Andrew are both rather dim.
- Villain Protagonist: The main characters are David and Peter, two bungling kidnappers.
- What You Are in the Dark: Peter has the opportunity to abandon Tracey to be killed by the Farmer and save himself, but goes back to rescue her. They both die anyway.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Peter, David's brother and co-conspirator, is terrified of moths.
