Shallow Grave earned Boyle the Best Newcomer Award from the
1996 London Film Critics Circle and, together with
Trainspotting, led to critical commentary that Boyle had revitalised British cinema in the early 1990s.
Box office The film was the most commercially successful British film of 1995 with a gross of £5.2 million. It opened on 23 screens in the United Kingdom and grossed £152,131 in its opening weekend, finishing ninth at the box office. £100,512 of the gross came from 8 screens in London where it finished second in the capital and set four house records. In its fourth week of release, it expanded to 136 screens and moved up to third in the chart. The film was a success in Europe but grossed a total of just $2,834,250 in the United States. It led to Boyle's internationally successful production,
Trainspotting, two years later.
Critical response On
Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100 based on 21 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Caroline Westbrook of
Empire magazine gave it 5 out of 5 and wrote: "This, the debut feature from acclaimed TV director Danny Boyle, is the best British thriller for years, a chilling and claustrophobic heart-stopper centring on a moral dilemma destined to fuel many a dinner party conversation." Quentin Curtis of
The Independent wrote: "What makes the film fascinating, and exciting, is its marriage of British setting and American, B-movie format." Derek Elley of
Variety magazine called it "a tar-black comedy that zings along on a wave of visual and scripting inventiveness."
Hal Hinson of
The Washington Post remarked that "Boyle, who has an impressive reputation for his work on British television, has a lithe, energetic style, and he keeps the picture moving at a brisk clip. His characters, too, are young and fresh and promisingly rude—especially McGregor's Alex—but they become less and less interesting as the movie progresses. By its conclusion, just about everything intriguing in the film has evaporated."
Desson Howe, writing in the same newspaper, said that "what counts most in this grisly thriller-cum-black-comedy is jolting audiences out of their cynical complacency", but stated that while "there are moments when
Shallow Grave achieves a harmonic convergence of horror and macabre humor [...] Fox, McGregor and Eccleston merely mill around the screen like the kind of living-dead folks we usually see rising from the grave."
Janet Maslin of
The New York Times was critical of the film and said "misanthropy overwhelms his film in ways that prove more sour than droll, despite the presence of skillful actors and a bizarrely enveloping plot."
Awards • 1995
Angers European First Film Festival • Audience Award – Feature Film • Best Screenplay – Feature Film • Liberation Advertisement Award • 1995
BAFTA – Alexander Korda Award for Best British film (shared with Andrew Macdonald) • 1995
Cognac Festival du Film Policier • Audience Award • Grand Prix • 1994 Dinard British Film Festival • Golden Hitchcock •
1st Empire Awards (1996) •
Empire Award for Best British Film •
Empire Award for Best Director •
Empire Award for Best British Actor • 1995
Evening Standard British Film Award • Most Promising Newcomer for
Danny Boyle • 1995
Fantasporto (Portugal) • International Fantasy Film Award – Best Film • 1994
San Sebastian International Film Festival • Silver Seashell – Best Director == Music ==