Restless - Review

If the Safdie Brothers were British, they may have made something like Restless. A stressful thriller with a uniquely British sentiment. A film of intense paranoia with British politeness and suffering, as a woman deals with noisy neighbours helplessly.

The film opens with Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal) getting into a car in the middle of the night, exacerbated. She drives to the middle of a forest where she begins to dig a hole for a body, all accompanied by a dark operatic score. The film cuts back to one week earlier, when Nicky is on the phone with her sister, Rachael (Kate Webster), telling her everything is fine, but as we can work out, not for much longer.

Nicky is a character the audience can immediately get on side with. She works in a care home with her patients upset that she has replaced her more attractive colleague. Nicky is a single parent with her son in university. She relishes the peace and quiet, a hermit couped up in her house, spending her evenings watching the snooker and listening to the dulcet tones of Ken Doherty.

However, when some neighbours move in next door, the semi-detached house that used to be owned by her recently deceased parents. The house is owned by Deano (Aston McAuley), a hoodie-wearing druggie, who looks like he has walked off the set of Vikings or Robert Eggers’s The Northman. Accompanying Deano is a £300 sound system, the centrepiece of his parties, where he invites underage girls to drink and live freely until four in the morning.

Unsurprisingly the two disagree on acceptable noise use during the early hours. However, Nicky is helpless, as the police are unwilling to come out to deal with noise complaints. Thus, Nicky has to find any kind of way to get quiet rest. Lyndsey Marshal is extremely empathetic in the role as she has to deal with an egregious injustice. Combined with a brilliant script which knows when to cut the tension a dash, whilst still having ferocious intensity, it is a film of doing the simple things very well.

Restless was a brilliant surprise. A film where I had no idea what to expect and was rewarded with a tense, gripping thriller, with compelling characters and a real-life issue. I can’t wait to see what Jed Hart does next.