A Good Woman Is Hard to Find

Sarah Bolger proved to be a terrifying nanny from hell in Emelie (2015) but in Abner Pastoll's slow-burning yet visceral thriller, she plays Sarah, a meek and mild Irish widow put through hell following the murder of her husband that left her son mute. Sarah has been ground down by grief, apathetic police and an unsympathetic mother, so the last thing she and her two kids need is a twitchy thief stashing stolen drugs in her house, especially as the narcotics belong to a fearsome, sadistic gang boss (Edward Hogg). Pastoll invests time in his housing-estate locations in Belgium and Northern Ireland - without going fully into Ken Loach mode - and builds tension deftly with the aid of Matthew Pusti's menacing score. Meanwhile, Bolger delivers a convincingly nuanced performance, as we see her bereft and downtrodden innocent driven to increasingly gruesome acts to protect her loved ones from the brutal depredations of Hogg and his heavies. Her climactic transformation into a person who shouldn't be messed with has all the hallmarks of Abel Ferrara's cult 1981 chiller Ms 45, and that's no bad thing.