Blockhead review: a novelist confronts his darker side in a sharp comic thriller

Matt Harlock’s Blockhead is a brisk British indie thriller about literary ambition, insecurity and the dangerous appeal of a more forceful alter ego. Drawing on the familiar idea of Robert Louis Stevenson’s divided self while writing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the film places that conflict inside the contemporary literary world.

Danny Horn plays Will Mercer, a celebrated novelist whose debut, A Random Act, made him a BritLit favourite. His struggle to complete a second book threatens his relationships, professional representation and public reputation. Seeking refuge in a friend’s garret, Will encounters Mikey, a charismatic, physically imposing builder played by Joe Sims.

Mikey becomes both an unlikely companion and a source of inspiration. As Will gains confidence, he begins pursuing increasingly grim material, including home invasion and murder. His increasingly extreme speeches to creative-writing students also attract an admiring protege, exposing the influence of literary posturing and the market’s appetite for supposedly “confrontational” and “dangerous” writers.

Harlock uses the story to satirise the idea of the bad-boy novelist, questioning how much aggression can really be wielded from behind a laptop. The film’s visual style reinforces that tension through masks, screens and the contrast between the sparse, blank-page feel of Will’s lodgings and the darker world he enters.

Horn captures Will’s combination of bravado and insecurity, while Sims plays Mikey as a force capable of puncturing the writer’s grander pretensions. The film includes a striking Hitchcockian image involving fairylights and a victim falling from a balcony, alongside a symmetrical visual structure that links its different layers.

Although a mid-film drug trip feels only partly justified by its Coleridge reference, Blockhead remains an intelligent and effective first feature. Its thriller framework and comic edge give Harlock room to examine literary machismo without treating Will’s transformation as straightforward empowerment.

Sources: The Guardian Film.