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About This Film
Colin Burstead rents a country house and gathers his extended family and friends to celebrate New Year, hoping to manage the event like a competent host. The arrival of his estranged brother David exposes how little control he actually has over the group. Ben Wheatley strips away the genre machinery of his more violent films and concentrates on social friction: invitations, resentments, old humiliations, alcohol, family alliances, and the pressure to keep a party going after everyone has stopped enjoying it. New Year is essential because the entire gathering is organized around the promise of collective renewal while almost every character drags unresolved history into the house.
Famous Quote
“I just wanted to see my family one last time.”— Bertie (English)
Vibe
New Year —
Watch For
- Watch Neil Maskell’s Colin try to control logistics as emotional authority slips away.
- Notice Laurie Rose’s mobile camera moving between overlapping pockets of conflict.
- Track music and dancing as temporary relief rather than genuine reconciliation.
- Pay attention to who is invited, who was not supposed to come, and how inclusion itself becomes family power.
Production Notes
BFI identifies the film as Ben Wheatley’s 2018, 94-minute feature. Sight and Sound describes Colin gathering eighteen relatives and friends in a rented mansion to ring in the New Year, with estranged brother David destabilizing the event. BFI’s festival video notes that the film was shot in under two weeks, contributing to the mobile, performance-centered energy achieved by Wheatley and cinematographer Laurie Rose. Rather than opening the event into many locations, production concentrates the family inside one temporary residence.
Trivia
- Ben Wheatley wrote and directed the film.
- BFI lists a 94-minute runtime.
- Neil Maskell plays Colin and Sam Riley plays estranged brother David.
- The family gathers specifically to celebrate New Year.
- BFI notes that principal shooting was completed in under two weeks.
Legacy
Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is one of Wheatley’s most recognizable human-scale films, demonstrating that the tension underlying Kill List or High-Rise can survive without genre escalation. The movie joins the long tradition of holiday family-gathering dramas but brings a specifically British class and comic texture. New Year works especially well because Colin wants the party to prove he can hold people together; the holiday’s symbolic reset only exposes how resistant family history is to scheduling. The film has gained a modest but durable reputation as an alternative New Year watch for viewers who prefer discomfort to sentimentality.