PROTEIN (2024)

4 stars

Bulldog Film Distribution. Select cinemas 13th June followed by digital 14th July

Sion (Craig Russell) is back from a stint in the army, and arrives in a small town in Wales with just a backpack and a sleeping bag. Trying to look for somewhere to crash, he finds an abandoned building, which appears to still have power and has a large chest freezer, which will figure later. He is clearly suffering from PTSD.

When he visits a small local gym – he doesn’t have enough money but Katrina (Kezia Burrows) lets him anyway. Starting to lift weights he gets flashbacks. As he is leaving, single mum Katrina takes pity on him and offers that he can do some hours at the gym cleaning etc. Sion starts working there – talking to Katrina he reveals he was in Afghanistan, then hospital and working around the South East, London, Kent.

Meanwhile, at a local club, drug deals go on in the office between owner Joe Llewelyn (Richard Mylan) and some criminal types. Dwayne (Kai Owen) and his buddies work there as bouncers – they also frequent the gym. When Sion witnesses Dwayne physically assaulting Katrina, he later turns up at his house and bashes his skull in. He then proceeds to chop and slice him up and puts him into black bin bags. He then takes back parts, places them in the freezer, plus eats some of the bloody remains. For protein…

The police investigate after Dwayne’s body, or what’s left of it, is found – thinking its gang and drug related killing. Also helping the Welsh police is Patch (Andrea Hall), who believes it’s the work of a serial killer she has been tracking.

This is a gangland crime story mixed in with a specific horror element – well directed by Tony Burke, in his feature film debut, this is an expansion of his 2014 short of the same name, which also starred Russell. He also wrote the script with Mike Oughton. The cast are uniformly excellent, though proceeding are all a bit bleak – there are moments of black comedy within the grimness. The ending feels slightly unsatisfactory.

Steve Kirkham