THE DIGITAL STORM (ACCUSED)

© Netflix  & XYZ Films

We see it all the time.

Frightened or outraged citizens rush to judgment, baying for swift punishment not just for those suspected of alleged crimes but for people holding views they object to.

Some are not prepared to wait for justice to take its course.

Some don't believe in the principle of free speech.

They just want punishment without due process.

It's a problem that existed long before social media.

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Commentators who trade on outrage in print or broadcast media outlets have been guilty of it for decades.

However, there's no doubt social media has exacerbated it.

Online rushes to judgment toxify debate and make due process harder to follow.

And that's the central concern of British director Philip Barantini's new Netflix movie 'Accused'.

Written by Barnaby Boulton and James Cummings, the thriller stars 'Sex Education' cast member Chaneil Kular as Harri Bhavsar, a young Londoner who finds himself in the eye of a social and mainstream media storm.

At the beginning, we see him with his girlfriend Lauryn Ajufo's Chloe making plans for her to join him at his family's  home where he is house and dog sitting while his parents are away on a break.

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Making his way through London, Harri heads for a train station wearing a baseball cap and carrying a rucksack - straying into the path of two young women messing about on social media.

On his train journey, phones start to ping and ring as word filters out that the station where Harri and some of the passengers boarded has been the target of a bomb attack.

Harri is met off the train by his father, Nitin Ganatra's Ramesh and joins their mum Nila Aalia's Isha for lunch before they leave on their holiday.

In the meantime, unbeknown to Harri, keyboard warriors fuelled by news reports of the attack are speculating that Islamic terrorists are behind the bombing.

When images surface of Harri walking through the train station, some start to bay for his blood.

By the time Harri begins to realise he's being wrongfully identified on TV as the suspect, the digital lynch mob has started to identify who he is.

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It's only a matter of time when some of them will track him down and take matters into their own hands.

Those who have been following Barantini's career will know the Liverpudlian is a director of considerable talent.

On the small screen, he has built a firm reputation directing with great panache TV shows like the Merseyside cop drama 'The Responder' on BBC1 and ITV's medical thriller 'Malpractice'.

However he's probably best known for last year's tour de force one take movie 'Boiling Point' set in a struggling London fine dining restaurant.

Starring Stephen Graham, it presaged FX, Hulu and Disney+'s 'The Bear' and has now been given its own BBC TV spin-off which Barantini is involved in.

What Barantini has shown in these projects is a strong sense of the power of the image and a real flair for building tense, pacy narratives.

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Those qualities are assets in 'Accused,' buoying up the film in its clunkiest moments.

The central premise of Boulton and Cumming's screenplay is hardly revelatory.

We can all reel off recent examples of online hate mobs feeding off and whipping up mainstream media and demanding pounds of flesh.

The rush to judge Harri on the back of grainy CCTV footage and then social media video is believable.

Faced with the challenge, though, of sustaining their audience's interest while Harri stares at the rantings of an online lynch mob, Barantini, Boulton and Cummings wisely adopt the beats of the home invasion thriller.

In lesser hands, it wouldn't work so well.

However Barantini, his cinematographer Matthew Lewis and film editor Alex Fountain do a really good job putting all the right elements in place so when the violent confrontation does come, it is very well executed.

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As Harri unwinds alone in his parents' house, at first oblivious to the digital storm gathering around him, the director nicely references the baying mobs of James Whale's version of 'Frankenstein' which he watches the 1931 film on television.

Barantini also peppers Harri's increasing concern about being made public enemy number one with sprinklings of ill informed comment from keyboard warriors and then expertly brings events to the boil.

Watching this, some viewers will think of the 2012 Thomas Vinterberg's movie 'Jagten (The Hunt)' where every morsel of gossip resulted in the witch hunt of Mads Mikkelsen's teacher who was wrongfully accused of paedophilia.

But another measure of Barantini's consummate skill can be seen in the way handles the bombing is impressive and sensitive - focusing on the reaction rather than the actual atrocity.

As usual, the director draws strong performances out of his cast.

Kular has to carry a lot on his back but makes for a very sympathetic lead.

Ganatra, who many viewers will recognise from the BBC soap 'Eastenders,' and Aalia convince as very charming and believable parents.

© Netflix & XYZ Films

Ajufo does well as Chloe panics on the other end of the phone about the accusations made against her boyfriend.

Frances Tomelty is on strong form as an elderly Northern Irish neighbour, Mrs Daly who Harri turns to.

Occasionally the online sentiment expressed in Boulton and Cummings' script feels a bit too on the nose.

However Barantini's sense of pace and eye for detail does enough to distract the viewer from these shortcomings.

'Accused' is a plausible, resourceful, well made low budget thriller.

There is no doubt, though, that the man behind the camera, Philip Barantini is the star.

Every trick is pulled out of his director's bag to ramp up the tension.

Bouyed by the imminent arrival of 'Boiling Point' on our TV screens, we can't wait to see what he also does next in cinemas.

('Accused' was released for streaming on Netflix in the UK and Ireland on September 22, 2023)