“In The Loop” Director Armando Iannucci (@aIannucci), Genre… Horror.

The clips and trailers doing the rounds on the Internet promise hilarious swearing, and hilarious swearing is delivered, but at the end of the film Armando punches you ‘in the cock’ and demands the question: Why was I laughing at this?

It’s not like ‘Be Kind Rewind’ – where the trailers promised a dumb Jack Black fuelled comedy, and then delivered a quite sad, thought provoking and poignant social commentary on the nature of ‘the hood’. In the Loop, in contrast, delivers on the comedy – but you’re left wondering whether, by laughing, the joke is actually on you. 

The biggest laughs, without doubt, come from the un-PC, socially inappropriate nature of the swearing by angry Scottish spin doctors – telling an American Tourist to, “Suck mah sweaty balls, ye fat fuck!” pulled the biggest laugh of the night.

See, I laughed too. And was very much enjoying myself until the film’s climax, where Malcolm Tucker – the barely disguised Alistair Campbell – proves himself to be very much a complete monster. Doesn’t have tentacles or fangs, but he’s still a monster. 

That evil spirit from the Ring? Doesn’t kill as many people as Malcolm Tucker, played by the truly chilling Peter Capaldi. In fact, most fictional monsters don’t even come close. So I class this film as Horror – quite literally the scariest film (on reflection) that you’ll see this year. 

My favourite non-sweary joke of the film comes from James Gandolfini playing General Miller, after showing there’s 12 thousand troops available for a new war.

“12 thousand? That’s how many’s going to die. And… you need to have some troops still alive at the end… otherwise it looks like you lost.”

Highly recommend, especially for political geeks – but perhaps the subject matter is a little bit too real for the comedy to entirely conceal the very, very disturbing message at the heart of this film.