I couldn't help but feel that the film is about the British psyche in post-war and post-colonial Britain. The film was representative of a time when British control and power over the rest of the world was on the wane. With their best already behind them, the British were trying to find a new purpose. I wrote the above for my review of Look Back in Anger. Like the characters in Look Back in Anger, Christie, Beryl Evans and Timothy Evans seem to have no future. Their meager residences with barely hidden squalor had decline and desolation written all over them.
The film is subtly terrifying and gruesome. It is under-directed with a zoom in (or dolly in?) often used to punctuate many scenes. There is a play like quality to the sets with a single light used in the sordid and seedy indoor scenes.
Words cannot describe how good John Hurt is in this film. He is the very embodiment of the illiterate, confused and helpless working class man. The scene where he is surrounded and sneered at by patrons at a bar was very very sad. Richard Attenborough as Christie was menacing and insidious. But were we supposed to feel some sympathy for the cunning and murderous Christie? Why else was the film mostly told from his point of view?