Tom Green brings a useful roughness to genre stories, keeping attention on the people caught up in them. His early work on Misfits makes him worth following, though we are more cautious about his move into features.
Fi1m perspective
In Misfits (2009), laughter can give way to unease without the programme stopping to explain the change. Green directed the opening episodes of its first two series, helping establish that confidence with changes of mood. We laughed, then felt unsettled, because the cutting lets menace follow a joke without making either seem misplaced.
Howard Overman's writing and the cast deserve much of the credit: the characters are often unpleasant, but their behaviour usually earns the laughter. The editors credited on the series include Barney Jordan, Crispin Green, David Head and Andrew MacRitchie, whose pace keeps the silliness from becoming a chore. Green's role in setting up the series matters, but we would not mistake it for sole responsibility for everything that works. Even then, there are stretches when we tire of the characters' company; the programme is good enough to make that worth tolerating.
Television work on Blackout (2012) preceded his first feature, Monsters: Dark Continent (2014), which he directed and co-wrote. Shot handheld in Jordan, the science-fiction war film extends his interest in documentary-like camerawork. Some critics found the story uneven and the genre elements under-developed, reservations that make us cautious about recommending the feature. He later returned to television for episodes of the virtual-reality thriller Kiss Me First (2018).
Cinematographer Christopher Ross is a recurring collaborator, while small crews and handheld shooting are recurring tools. Those choices make sense for a director interested in keeping genre stories close to recognisable human behaviour, though a restless image is not enough to keep a drama moving. We would look for the same control of pace that we admired in Misfits before assuming the method will work at feature length. Start with Misfits, provided abrasive company is not a reason to switch off.
Biography
Tom Green is a British director and writer. He directed six episodes of the E4 series Misfits across its first two series (2009–2010).
His feature debut was the science-fiction film Monsters: Dark Continent (2014), which he also co-wrote. He later directed the Channel 4 and Netflix miniseries Kiss Me First (2018). Other television credits include episodes of Blackout (2012).
