[Julia Deakin's] Ma Barker role (and performance) is essential to the film's grotesque yet enthralling familial fatalism.

The British do kitchen-sink realism extremely well; they also have a nice way with black comedy. It's rare, however, to see the two as wickedly combined as they are in Down Terrace.

A low-budget effort by British director Ben Wheatley, Down Terrace is an enjoyably nasty piece of business about a down-market sort of underworld clan.

That Down Terrace has such a simple, effective framework, with age-old thematics and a killer set-up, is its immediate charm, but it is also executed supremely well.