It’s actually the story of a select club for the elite few at Oxford University. With a capped membership, and a reputation that extends back a good century or two, it turns out there are a couple of vacancies come the start of the year. The two inevitably become early rivals, as gradually writer Laura Wade – who penned the screenplay based on her own stage play, Posh – exposes us more and more to the views and behaviours of the infamous Riot Club. It’s a very slow escalation, handled surely by Danish director Lone Scherfig. After her fumbled take on David Nicholls’ One Day, this is far closer to the standard she demonstrated with the excellent An Education, and there’s no point in The Riot Club where you don’t find yourself in some way transfixed by what’s happening. It is far from a comfortable film to watch, and a hard sell too: films this harsh generally need at least one or two characters to cling to, to give us a more relatable way into the story. Yet Scherfig and Wade barely tick that box. This is a savage arrow to the heart of the establishment. The film builds towards its biggest culture clash, as the ten besuited members of The Riot Club turn up in an out-of-the-way pub for their ‘dinner’. Here, the stage origins of the material shine through a little, as Scherfig slowly builds up the tension and intensity of the event. It’s the highlight of the movie: as the people round the table down more and more drink, she takes her time getting to things that the film’s horrible spoilerific trailer has less discipline in holding back. The Riot Club, with its refusal to compromise in its exploration of humanity’s less pleasant side, feels not dissimilar in tone to some of the earlier work of Neil LaBute. You don’t necessarily get to the end credits ever wanting to sit through it again, but it’s a challenging, political piece of work, capable of inducing a variety of emotions, none of which are related to ‘warm’ and ‘happy’. Don’t expect it to feature too heavily in Oxford University’s prospectus… Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.