Straightheads 2007

Adam, Danny Dyer, a 23-year-old self-employed security technician, is hired by businesswoman Alice Comfort Gillian Anderson to set up a security system in her flat. After finishing the work, Adam falls asleep on her roof-garden. When Alice arrives home and finds him there, she impulsively asks him to accompany her to a housewarming party for her boss. He is unsure, but eventually agrees. While at the party, Alice and Adam share a charged moment and have passionate sex, a private moment that starkly contrasts with the quiet routine of their initial encounter.

Driving home from the party, Alice overtakes a slow-moving vehicle, while Adam shouts an obscenity at the driver. Shortly after, Alice accidentally hits a stag. While she and Adam are dragging the animal off the road, the car that Alice overtook earlier pulls up. Three men step out and proceed to beat Adam and then gang-rape Alice. The assault shatters their sense of safety and begins to fracture their relationship, even as they physically recover over the following weeks. A month passes, and while the injuries heal, both remain emotionally scarred, haunted by what happened and by the looming question of what to do next.

On news of her father’s death while she was hospitalised, Alice drives out to his country house to sort through his affairs. There she discovers a locked chest that she recognises from her childhood, a tangible link to a past she thought she’d left behind. On the return journey, she passes a group of horse riders; one rider looks familiar, and she later learns his name — Heffer — from another member of the troupe. The discovery of Heffer becomes a fuse for their plans, a name that ties the present danger to a history they barely glimpsed before.

Alice contacts Adam, and he makes his way to her father’s house, where she explains that she has found one of the men responsible for the attack. She then reveals the contents of her father’s locked chest: a sniper rifle and a silencer her father apparently smuggled home after being discharged from the army. She tells Adam that she intends to avenge herself against Heffer, and perhaps others who took part in the assault. They stake out Heffer’s home with the intent to kill, a plan that presses the boundaries of vengeance and legality.

A twist of fate interrupts their vigil when a young woman comes out of the house looking for her dog, which Alice has killed in the course of their vigilance. This woman, Sophie Francesca Fowler, is later identified as Heffer’s daughter. The sight of a human being with a family disrupts their resolve and forces them to confront the moral complexities of their planned retribution. They return home, unsettled by the realization that their attacker is not a faceless villain but a man with relationships and responsibilities.

In the days that follow, Adam’s drive hardens while Alice grows increasingly reluctant to kill Heffer, unsettled by the human element she has just witnessed. Instead, she shifts tactics, allowing Adam to return to Heffer’s house to install security equipment that could reveal the identities and locations of Heffer’s friends. The plan to uncover allies evolves into a dangerous intruder mission. Adam manages to breach Heffer’s house and finds himself in Sophie’s room; initially he tries to quiet her so he can escape, but a sudden surge of rage overtakes him and he rapes Sophie. She escapes in the middle of the attack, and Adam returns home, strangely capable of an erection for the first time since the assault.

The next day, Alice uses a laptop to monitor the security cameras and watches Heffer’s movements. She realizes his intention is to end his own life and, in a surge of urgency, hurries to his house with her rifle. She finds Heffer in his garage, seated in his car with the engine running, attempting to commit suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. She pulls him from the car, saving his life, but the moment is disorienting for both of them. In the delirium of carbon monoxide exposure, Heffer confesses that a month earlier his friends had planned to rape his daughter, but he persuaded them to attack a woman and her friend in the road instead, a revelation that adds a troubling layer to the violence that has already occurred.

Just then, Adam’s voice calls from outside, and Heffer’s demeanor shifts to aggression once more. He grabs Alice, but she reacts, striking him and freeing herself. Adam bursts into the house, beats Heffer, and binds him to the kitchen table. He and Alice then enact a brutal sequence of revenge: Alice sodomizes Heffer with the barrel of the rifle, choosing not to shoot immediately, while Adam, in a surge of fury, carves out Heffer’s eye with a hunting knife. Horrified, Alice escapes, and she drives back toward her father’s home, where she spots Sophie hitch-hiking and invites her into the car. Sophie, wary, asks where they’re headed, and Alice responds with a quiet, ominous line: “Somewhere safe.”

Back at Heffer’s house, the cycle of vengeance continues. Adam taunts Heffer as more attackers arrive; Adam shoots one intruder in the head and pursues the second, shooting him in the leg to slow him down before delivering a brutal, final blow with the rifle butt. The violence culminates in a stark, unresolved close-up: Adam walks away from his victim, turning to look directly at the camera, leaving the audience to ponder the implications and consequences of their actions.

In the end, the film lingers on the cost of revenge and the blurred lines between justice and brutality, inviting reflection on whether there is a justice that can ever truly repair what has been broken. The camera’s final gaze asks viewers to confront the realities of vengeance, trauma, and moral ambiguity that define the characters’ choices.

“Somewhere safe.”