AS you might suppose from the text-speak, no-capitals title of Andrew Douglas's British drama, this is a film about youth but not necessarily exclusively for them.
With some star-making performances and a tricksy (if sometimes tin-eared) script, uwantme2killhim? deserves a wider audience than might at first seem the case.
Billing itself as being "based on a true story", this is a thoroughly modern tale of web chats and webs of intrigue, all set against the bland background of English suburbia.
Mark (Jamie Blackley) is one of the school's likely lads, fooling around with someone else's girlfriend while befriending another woman on the internet. Rachel, or "angel83" as she is known online, is having a grim time with her partner, and worried about her younger brother, John (Toby Regbo), who is being bullied at school. Mark befriends him to please Rachel, and soon the teenager finds himself pressed further into her cause.
Douglas's drama, which is up for the Michael Powell Award, has a bad habit of repeating plot points, as if the director suspects the audience will not be used to concentrating for long, and the dialogue would have benefited from more of a polish. The film also asks the audience to keep faith with it while sharp twist follows handbrake turn.
Otherwise, what impresses here are the stylish visuals and the performances from a young cast that includes Joanne Froggatt (Downton Abbey and the forthcoming Filth) and Jaime Winstone. Most memorable of all, however, are Blackley and Regbo, both of whom look right at home on the cinema screen. UwillBseeinmoreofthem.
Tomorrow, 8.20pm; Wednesday, 6.15pm, Cineworld.
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Edinburgh International Film Festival
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