| Director | Danny Boyle, Ted Newsom |
|---|---|
| Genre | black comedy film, crime film, thriller film |
| Runtime | 89 min |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Budget | £1 million |
| Box office | $19.8 million |
Chartered accountant David Stevens shares a flat in Edinburgh with physician Juliet Miller and journalist Alex Law. Needing a new flatmate, the trio interview several applicants in a calculatedly cruel manner, amusing themselves at the applicants' expense before finally offering the room to a mysterious man named Hugo. Shortly after he moves in, the trio finds Hugo dead from an apparent drug overdose in his room, as well as a large suitcase full of money. The friends agree to conceal the death and keep the money for themselves. They decide to remove the identifying features—hands, feet and teeth—from Hugo's body and bury the remains in the woods. David is given the gruesome task of dismembering the corpse after they draw lots, while Juliet disposes of the leftovers in her hospital's incinerator.
Unbeknown to them, Hugo is being sought by a pair of violent criminals who are torturing and murdering informants as they follow his trail. The flat below theirs is broken into, making them anxious. While Juliet and Alex go on a shopping spree with the money to "feel better," David's fears turn into full-blown paranoia. He hides the suitcase of money in the attic and begins living there, drilling holes in the attic floor to watch the living space below. The relationship between the three begins to deteriorate.
The criminals break into the flat, beating Alex and Juliet until Alex reveals where the money is. As the men enter the dark attic, David kills both of them with a hammer and returns to the woods to dispose of the bodies. Alex and Juliet become worried about David's mental state, and David becomes worried that the two are conspiring against him. The police, investigating the prior intrusion, are surprised when the three friends deny that they ever had a fourth flatmate.
The bodies are discovered in the woods, and Alex is sent by his editor to cover the story. With the police now closing in, Juliet seduces David into giving her the money so she can buy plane tickets to Rio de Janeiro and they can run away together, but secretly she plans to go alone. Alex returns from work and—realising that Juliet and David are working together and that his life is in danger—tries to phone the police. Their confrontation escalates to violence. David reveals that he knew about Juliet's secret plan to betray both him and Alex, and punches her, prompting Alex to attack him too. Alex is stabbed in the shoulder by David, but Juliet kills David before he can kill Alex.
With David dead, Juliet decides to force the knife deeper into Alex's shoulder, pinning him to the floor, so that the police will find him with David's body and blame him for all four of the deaths. She flees with the suitcase to the airport, but in the car park she discovers that it is actually filled with hundreds of newspaper clippings about the triple shallow grave, taken from Alex's newspaper. She breaks down hysterically, and with no possessions other than the plane ticket, she boards the plane to Rio.
The police arrive at the flat to find Alex pinned to the floor in a large pool of blood; it is revealed that the cash is hidden under the floorboards. David finishes the monologue that began the film. A sheet is drawn over his face and his body is slid into a drawer in the morgue.