Protein

British Dark Humour has never been so Dark, Funny, and Disturbingly Tasty.

“Protein” is a gritty, blood-soaked drama starring Sion (Craig Russell), an ex-soldier returned from Afghanistan, haunted by PTSD and armed with some unwelcome new skills.

Now employed at a gym as a cleaning-boy, he falls in with a Welsh gang of drug dealers where toxic masculinity, violence, and “protein powder” blend into something queasily bloody.

There’s no denying that the hybrid of horror/drama and sport—or rather, horror through sport—is emerging as cinema’s new frontier, and “Protein” proves once again even cannibalism can double as biting social commentary.

In a culture obsessed with perfect diets and the delusion of body and mental perfection, Tony Burke’s film dives headlong into that madness.

The story folds together gym culture, dissembling bodies, and a faintly absurd noir aesthetic, crafting a low-budget thriller that’s both grotesque and hypnotic.

It flirts shamelessly with horror’s visceral edges while dismantling the conventions of the crime drama through a slow, methodical descent into darkness.

Its alternating tones—some characters tormented and introspective, others laugh-out-loud absurd—form its secret winning card.

“Protein” is far from flawless, but its imperfections make it more human, more unsettling. It’s a revenge film in pure British style: steeped in noir aesthetics, unravelling with quiet menace and a lingering sense of moral decay.

The comparison with “Dead Man’s Shoes,” as many have made, feels almost impossible—though “Protein” flirts with a dark humour entirely absent from Meadows’ bleak masterpiece.

Co-written with Mike Oughton and expanding Burke’s 2014 short of the same name, this feature debut compels not for its carnage alone, but for how deftly Burke and Oughton entwine that violence within a richly textured noir framework reminiscent of 1990s British cinema.

Sion’s moral ambiguity, the shadow-drenched cinematography, and the creeping sense of entrapment in a community rotting from within recall the bleak power of classic British crime cinema.

Sion becomes a veteran turned avenging spectre, dispensing a warped sense of justice where the law falters.

He’s a broken man, becoming a metaphor for consumption, transformation, and control. His cannibalism isn’t born of sadism but of delusion, a desperate act of self-repair.

This is noir not merely in look but in philosophy: the world is corrupt, redemption is tainted, and salvation is always paid for in blood.