We rate Börkur Sigthorsson’s confident handling of thriller action and his attention to performance. Down Cemetery Road makes a strong case for both, though its alert actors sometimes have to wait for the plotting.
Fi1m perspective
Down Cemetery Road (2025) gets sharper when Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson irritate each other, and moving into action does not cost it that dry humour. We were caught up in the suspense once the plot gathered speed; the leads’ prickly exchanges had kept us interested during the wait. Börkur Sigthorsson shares directing duties with Natalie Bailey and Sam Donovan, so the credit belongs to all three. That suits a director whose crime stories tend to put difficult choices before compromised people, then leave us to decide what to make of them.
Photography came before music videos and commercials, and the spare framing of his dramatic work reflects that background. Shorts including Support (2008) preceded the longer commitment to Trapped (2016–2021), followed by British television work on Baptiste (2019). These are settings in which his attention to psychology and understated pacing has an obvious use. The risk is equally clear: if a thriller is going to take its time, the people need to give us something to watch while it does.
Vultures (2018), his feature debut as director and writer, makes that risk especially relevant: its drug-smuggling story builds suspense through character, but the plotting is thin. That is a limitation worth keeping in mind without making it the verdict on everything he directs. His subsequent television work includes the science-fiction series Katla (2021).
The eight-episode first series of Down Cemetery Road is worth the patience, though the patience is sometimes tested. Thompson and Wilson stay alert even when the story dawdles, and there are passages when we are ready to move on before the programme is. We would not assign that delay to one of three directors, any more than we would give Sigthorsson sole credit for the confident action. Watch it for Thompson and Wilson, and allow the conspiracy a little longer than it ought to need.
