This debut thriller from theatre director Sam Yates (Vanya, featuring Andrew Scott) deals with hot, messy emotions in a cold, contained manner. Taking its cue from the spacious yet airless modernist house that encases the crumbling family at its centre – and from producer/star Daisy Ridley’s short, sharp haircut, perhaps clipped from Rosemary’s Baby – it’s a measured and muted affair, all slow build and steely colours.
Given that writer Ben (Shazad Latif) proves himself to be an unsupportive, self-absorbed dick from the opening scene and only gets worse from there, you might find yourself wishing for more heat: a Midsommar-style bonfire by the half-hour mark would do it. For while Latif brings a wrinkle of humour and a twinkle of eye to the part, he’s not afforded a great deal of nuance to play with. This, after all, is a guy who happily uses his cute daughter to cosy up to Alicia (Matilda Lutz) – an actor who’s presently unmoored by a leaked sex tape – and who either blanks or berates his wife, Anette (Ridley), of an evening. Never mind that she’s given up a career in publishing to spend days staring at walls, soundtracked by wails.
But Yates prefers precision. Working from a script by actor Tom Bateman (Hercule Poirot’s friend and foil Bouc in Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile), based on a story idea by Ridley, he favours shots of Anette reflected in mirrors, flattened by panes of glass or hemmed in by door frames. Ridley, who impressed playing troubled women in Sometimes I Think About Dying and The Marsh King’s Daughter (roles far, far away from her signature turn as Rey in the Star Wars sequels), is again striking as a mother who’s unseen and all but silenced. Until she isn’t, with Anette and the filmmakers finally getting a little unhinged, if not quite blowing the doors off, in a fun third act.