THE SECRET OF MARROWBONE (15)
promises, leaving her boy in the hands of well-to-do room-mate Willoughby (Asa Butterfield).
He educates Don on Slaughterhouse’s pecking order with runts like them at the bottom and sixth-formers at the top, including goddess-like Clemsie Lawrence (Corfield) and sadistic prefect Clegg (Tom Rhys Harries).
Don makes a bad first impression and angers Clegg.
“The only connection you’ll make around here is with my boot,” snarls the sixth-former.
Don struggles to acclimatise under the reign of headmaster Mr Chapman aka The Bat (Sheen), who has forged an unholy alliance with a firm called Terrafrack to generate funds for a dry ski slope and spa.
Drilling in nearby woods opens a sinkhole, which anti-fracking activist Woody (Frost) predicts is “a portal that leads right down to Hell!”
Disfigured beasts which inhabit a labyrinthine cave network beneath the school emerge from the sinkhole to eviscerate terrified pupils and staff, including lovesick tutor Meredith Houseman (Pegg).
Slaughterhouse Rulez settles for gore over giggles and there is no shortage of severed appendages and entrails on screen.
Cole and Butterfield come close to making us care about their plucky protagonists, whose young lives have been touched by tragedy.
We share their doom-laden outlooks before the end credits roll. ★★★★★
SUPERNATURAL period thriller. Rose Marrowbone (Nicola Harrison) spirits away her four children Jack (George Mackay), Billy (Charlie Heaton), Jane (Mia Goth) and Sam (Matthew Stagg) to her secluded childhood home in 1960s America. Rose falls gravely ill, leaving her brood in dire straits because Jack is too young to assume the role of his siblings’ legal guardian. A darkness manifests inside the home and the children try to prevent a malevolent spirit from lashing out. Six months pass and the children manage to placate the family’s suspicious lawyer while Jack falls under the spell of local girl Allie (Anya Taylor-Joy). ■ Download/stream from from November 5 and on DVD from November 19.