Novelist Helen Walsh makes an interesting debut as a writer-director with this atmospheric piece of lo-fi British social realism. It’s flawed by a slightly unconvincing and anticlimactic gun-related ending, but well acted, forthright and confident in the universe it creates. The action is moored to a triangle of dysfunction: teenage Shelly (Lauren McQueen) has been rehoused by social services after an abuse case and comes into contact with a menacing, manipulative pawnshop owner and loan shark, Mikey (Stephen Lord). He appears also to have some kind of relationship with Rachel (Brogan Ellis) and this now discarded young woman – from an upscale part of town – forms a strange, parasitic friendship with Shelly. The news that Shelly’s scary dad is coming up for parole smothers the whole movie with fear and jumpy paranoia. It’s a movie of watching and being watched. Rachel gets Shelly to do a runner from a restaurant, but it isn’t until later, when we appreciate how the waitress in that scene fits in to the larger picture, that we discern a pattern of resentment and revenge. That pattern is a little contrived, but it doesn’t stop this film ticking radioactively with unease.
