Blu-ray, DVD Release: Shallow Grave

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 12, 2012
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


Shallow Grave movie scene

Ewan McGregor (l.), Kerry Fox and Christopher Eccleston must deal with a corpse and a suitcase filled with cash in Shallow Grave.

The 1994 dark comedy/thriller Shallow Grave was the first film from director Danny Boyle (127 Hours), producer Andrew Macdonald, and screenwriter John Hodge (the team behind Boyle’s 1996 Trainspotting).

In the movie, three self-involved Edinburgh roommates—played by Kerry Fox (An Angel at My Table), Christopher Eccleston (Lennon Naked), and Ewan McGregor (Beginners), in his first starring role—take in a brooding boarder. When he dies of an overdose, leaving a suitcase full of money, the trio embarks on a series of very bad decisions, with extraordinarily grim consequences for all.

Macabre but with a streak of offbeat humor, Shallow Grave is a real engagingly naughty piece that’s reminiscent of Hitchcock while offering the modern style that one associates with Boyle and his team.

The Blu-ray and DVD editions of Shallow Grave, the first of Boyle’s films to be issued by Criterion, contain the following features:

• New, restored digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Brian Tufano, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Two audio commentaries: one by director Danny Boyle and the other by screenwriter John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald
• New interviews with stars Christopher Eccleston, Kerry Fox, and Ewan McGregor
Digging Your Own Grave, a 1993 documentary by Kevin Macdonald on the making of the film
• Andrew Macdonald and Kevin Macdonald’s video diary from the 1992 Edinburgh Film Festival, where they shopped around the script for Shallow Grave
Shallow Grave trailer and Trainspotting teaser trailer
• A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Kemp

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.