Anyway....
"Shuttle" *Spoilers in small text*
The recent splurge of extreme Horror and Exploitation movies from America ("Hostel 1 & 2", "Devil's Rejects", "House 1000 Corpses", "Saw") has been a mixed bag but has also been a generally effective and very welcome shot in the arm of a genre pretty much on it's tired, in-joke filled, moronic franchise aimed, oh so bland and extremely vapid and irritating knees in the previous decade.
So far this new Millennium has been as close to the Exploitation/Horror Heaven of the years between 1968 (or so) and 1983 (or so) we could have hoped for.
Even the rather more popcorn munching, multi-plex friendly American Horror film (the re-birth of the Slasher film for example back to its no messing, here for the fun, hack 'n' dice roots, "Wrong Turn 2", "See no Evil", "Laid to Rest", "All the Boys Love Many Lane", "Boogeyman 2") has given us some surprisingly gory, devilishly sick and violent efforts that have been generally very well made and funded.
Brutal and often bold and risk taking Horror, with a sometimes arthouse sensibility, has been at its most uncompromising in some of the chilling and powerfully grotesque movies from Europe in general ("Cannibal" from Germany, "Cold Prey", "Manhunt" from Norway for example) and France in particular ("Martyrs", "Inside", "Frontiers").
Even Australia did the brutal Horror business ("Wolf Creek", "Storm Warning") as did a regenerated (though often multinationally funded) British Horror film industry ("Mum and Dad", "The Children", "Severance", "Creep", "Dog Soldiers", "The Descent", "Shaun of the Dead", "28 Days Later").
All in all, at least in film, the 21st century has been very kind to Horror fans, with only the, still going strong, need to re-make many wonderful 70's/80's films (not even all Horror) for no good or welcome reasons whatsoever being the unwelcome stain on the crisp bedsheets.
And into this still young and exciting revitalised century comes "Shuttle".
A bloody, nasty, bleak little film about 5 people being driven to their various fates (or not) by a sinister airport shuttle driver.
An unusually long running time for such a film and a very quick to get going plot ensures that the film has plenty of time to offer up many twists, events, set-pieces and locale changes to ensure that something new and surprising is always going on, even if it sometimes sacrifices energy for event.
Strong performances are essential to keep an audience interested in what is often just a horror coated road movie and thankfully there are no bad turns here, with some solid work in particular from the lead actress Peyton List and the driver himself Tony Curran (with a pretty good American accent).
The film also delivers some nicely messy violence, all done with deadly seriousness, and lots of well honed terror and threat. It's good, solid, technically sharp horror movie making that we have come to now expect.
All this dark mayhem finally ends in a conclusion
that is up there with "Wolf Creek" for being so truly horrible. The eventual grotesque fate for the last character, that will also have a long and terrifying build up for the victim, is utterly audience unfriendly and stupendously bleak and ice cold. Not a fun time can be said to have been had!
It's not nice, but it's this uncompromising hardness and extremity that has been such a welcome breathe of fetid air to recent genre films for those craving a darker treat from some of their horror.
The problems with the film come from general troubles with the movies' basic setting and set-up and that old chestnut...some dumb choices by the characters and a **** load of unnaturally bad luck!
The film switches the power and advantage from bad guy to victim more often than any psycho film I can think of. As such, although this adds surprise and freshness to the proceedings, it does start to grate when the would be victims don;t do what you want them to do and what you hope you would do in such a situation.
Too often the victims utterly foul up their chances to our extreme frustration. It is a sadly large problem the film is stuck with, and seeing as the rest of the film is so good and well made it's a shame some more time and effort was not spent by writer/director Edward Anderson brainstorming the consequences of certain actions and how to realistically deal with them without simply having something foolish happen to get him out of the corner he foolishly wrote himself into.
And it also ignores what would be the biggest problems to any of this happening today, namely the fact that no modern city is ever this empty. Ever. And this place is damn empty believe me!
And in a world full of CCTV and speed/roadside cameras the Police would have been screeching around the corners in hot pursuit before half the running time has elapsed.
But in the end the film's strengths win out over its weaknesses and the film is (as so many Horror films are nowadays) ultimately saved by it's brutally uncompromising attitude and extremity that gives the right kind of viewer for such a film the kind of satisfaction (if not exactly fun-time enjoyment) they crave and have come to expect from this kind of Horror film today.
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A friend lent me the lot 
when i started That was it, just watched one after the other 
