Article #242079

Despite the best efforts of the fine cast this psychological thriller about a war correspondent returning to her home town falls short of exploring the full scope of family trauma

Fans of Nuala Ellwood’s bestselling psychological thriller about a war reporter revisiting the horrors of her childhood in Herne Bay may decide to stick with the book after this drab adaptation. Like a black sock that has infiltrated a wash-load of white bedsheets, the story has come out a dreary dull grey. The movie is stubbornly unintriguing despite a fine cast of actors doing their utmost. Even the almighty twist ending fails to pick up the pace.

Jenny Seagrove plays Kate Rafter, a hardened correspondent haunted by PTSD. She’s back from a stint in Aleppo for her mum’s funeral and staying in her childhood home. Seagrove plays it imperiously, eyes flashing; Kate has witnessed terrible atrocities, and seems irritated by the smallness of the lives in her home town. But she is raw and damaged; there are flashbacks to Iraq where she befriended a young boy, and some unconvincing scenes of sessions with a psychologist trying to unpick the trauma of her childhood in a home terrorised by a violent alcoholic father. When Kate starts hearing a child crying in the next door house, no one believes her.