Boyd van Hoeij

The director clearly takes depression and suicidal urges and the possibility they may be hereditary very seriously but that doesn’t mean that the film isn’t often very witty.

The frequent voice-overs, in which the boys read what they wrote (heard over shots of them writing), add distance rather than insight because it is not the action of writing that's revealing but the events and thought processes that led them to write what they did.

What makes the film so accessible despite its controversial subject matter is Wnendt’s total command of tone, which is never vulgar or intentionally out to shock.

After taking a couple of left turns following its thriller-like opening, Salvo unfortunately returns to a more conventional register in the closing reels, though the atmospheric picture does continuously fascinate on a visceral level.

There is a clear sense here that Coixet is completely out of her depth in this genre exercise, which is all excessive surfaces and no tension, however hard the music and sound effects try to tell audiences otherwise.