philllister-67415

A gritty rural noir revenge thriller set in a small English country town. We meet Abi, a young woman adrift in life after her much-loved dad's body was discovered tortured and mutilated in an isolated countryside spot. We meet Ewan and Matt, two brothers living on a run-down estate and involved in petty crime. The older brother Ewan dominates and manipulates the more sensitive Matt and the consequences are tragic for everyone involved. Abi's story and that of the brothers are interwoven across time as we discover more about how Abi's dad came to such an awful end. There's another thread to the story - one of the brothers is unexpectedly released from prison and Abi is determined to get revenge. This now gives her bleak life a new desperate focus. Derelict is a many-facetted psychological thriller, often subtle and sometimes unflinchingly brutal. At the end of it all Abi gets some sort of redemption and colour comes back into her life. It's style and storytelling is more art-house than mainstream, and will bear watching a few times to fully savour its richness of character and the pure quality of storytelling, acting, cinematography and the score.