The Boston Globe felt that Jarrold helped distinguish it from the many other adaptations by "keeping the reins in on his characters, emotionally and morally.
[10] Mandalay Vision hired Jarrold to direct the serial killer film Exit 147, with a script written by Travis Milloy.
[14] His Emmy-nominated Red Riding 1974 was highly acclaimed with Andrew Garfield, Sean Bean, and Rebecca Hall giving great performances.
Film Noir at its best according to the critics: the trilogy affords a fairly familiar immersion in contemporary British cinematic miserablism, where men and terror run wild, and beauty exists only in the cinematography and some of the performances.
Certainly, that’s true in the trilogy, which, starting with Red Riding 1974, leaps into the void when a young Yorkshire journalist, "Eddie Dunford" (Andrew Garfield, not up to the leading-man task), realizes that the murder of a girl might be connected to a few earlier deaths, an insight that finds him first chasing after clues and then being chased in turn.
Jarrold shot the film in Super 16 millimeter, which gives the images atmospheric grit and swirling grain that, with the almost comically ubiquitous cigarette smoke, nicely thickens the air (The New York Times).