Restless

Bluesky

To those who haven’t experienced it, nuisance noise can sound like a trivial thing, something that only those with comfortable lives and far too much time on their hands would make a fuss about. In fact, it’s a problem which can be overwhelming, with seriously detrimental effects not just on sleep but on mental health and even cardiovascular health. For thousands of people every year, it’s not just a case of being annoyed by the occasional party, but of having to endure something that starts every day and carries on into the small hours, making it hard to think straight, intruding into the home so that there’s nowhere one can go to feel safe and relax. It can create the kind of trauma that stays with people for years.

If you have experienced this, you’ll find Jed Hart’s thriller a difficult watch. He doesn’t turn up the volume, but uses tone and repetition so effectively that the film becomes a microcosm of the real experience. Even newcomers to the phenomenon will find it annoying and hard to sit through. Hart could very easily drive away his audience. If you stick around, it will likely be because you relate to heroine Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal) and want to see how she will handle it, or because, having been through something similar, you’re hoping for proxy revenge.

Whilst there is certainly room for a no-holds-barred horror film on this subject, that’s not where Hart’s interest lies. His focus is on character and, for the most part, keeping it real, though the ending feels a bit too convenient. There are moments when we see extreme behaviour but they’re still handled with caution. It’s not really what Nicky does that matters, but what happens to her psychologically, and how she responds to that. Woven through this is a fable about bullying and the distorting effect it can have on communities, as well as the risks it ultimately poses for the bullies themselves.

In order to make this work, we need to have a clear impression of who Nicky is, so Hart takes time to introduce her: a nurse working in geriatrics who has recent lost her own mother, which means she’s under stress to begin with, but someone who enjoys a relaxed home life, cooking, listening to podcasts, watching snooker, reading in bed, hanging out with her plump tabby cat, Reggie. These aspects of the film are nicely realised and emphasise the importance of her home as a retreat. Distressed as she becomes, she’s not always likeable, but Marshal does a good job of making her relatable.

Alongside the noise issue, Restless also touches on issues around the day to day abuse encountered by women, the crisis of underfunded social care, and the social dynamics of housing estates. There’s nothing particularly revelatory about any of it, though Hart occasionally adds little flourishes that make it more cinematic, such as when Nicky looks up at the sky outside her house and sees a layer of cloud lying across the top of the street like a lid, emphasising the claustrophobia of her situation. It’s not just her noisy new neighbours who are the problem, but the other people happy to exploit the situation or turn a blind eye. This is a small, petty world in which nobody seems to hold out real hope for better things, but it’s the world as many people know it, and within its limits, the drama plays out well enough.