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How others will see it. A moderately attractive women is in most of the scenes. Add quality cinematography, an occasionally amusing script, and a series of intense, suspenseful scenes, and you have what most folks consider to be a good movie.
A small minority of the audience will disapprove of, and even despise, the main characters. If not for their youth, then for their unshakable belief in their own social superiority. Those who share this decidedly contrarian attitude toward our anti-heroes will enjoy their general comeuppance.
How I felt about it. Of all things, Shallow Grave reminds me of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Three people quickly make a fortune, have to fight off murderous robbers to keep it, and lose their sanity believing their partners are traitors. Which, in fact, they are.
Foul crimes up the ante. If this were a traditional film with a semblance of a production code, we know that "Crime Doesn't Pay" condemns our trio to a bad end. But just as crime (or at the minimum, unprosecutable unethical behavior) often does pay in real life, it can pay off in the movies as well, at least in recent decades.
As an insightful individual once said about the movie Wild Things, anyone could have ended up on that boat. Meaning, it's almost random which characters win and lose. The winner is most likely to be Juliet, a fun-loving but ultimately selfish woman who can leverage her body into a partnership with either immature Alex or brooding David, depending upon which one is more useful (i.e. present) to her at the moment.
In Treasure of the Sierra Madre, it was Humphrey Bogart who became paranoid and murderous, all the while certain that he was being streetwise instead of a sap. It's not too different with Shallow Grave. David, who was wound too tight to begin with, is the fellow who now views his friends as conspiring enemies (which they promptly become). David, like Humphrey Bogart before him, receives due punishment. Alex, like Tim Holt, is seriously wounded but lives to see another day. The difference is that the gold doesn't become dust in the wind, but instead provides a final plot twist.
So, why isn't Shallow Grave a great film, instead of merely providing entertainment? The problems are usually with the characters and scenes. When your best character is a detective with a minor role, and your best scene involves a five-second ambush in a bathroom, what does that tell you? Namely, the wrong things are emphasized, as usual.