Never Have I Ever

One day, when Sam (Andrew Lee Potts) gets back to his flat, there’s a ribbon-wrapped bottle of wine sitting on the kitchen worktop waiting for him, and he has no idea where it came from.

Perhaps this shouldn’t seem so odd. He does drink a lot – but he doesn’t seem to be given to blackouts, and the idea that he could have possessed such a bottle and not consumed its contents seems, well, unlikely. Plus he has had no money. We’ve seen him run after a friend of his dead wife in the street, begging her to lend him money for cigarettes; the degree of disdain with which she responds to this entreaty, in the circumstances, is telling. Nobody who knows him seems to like or trust him. The only sympathetic communication he gets comes from a producer to whom he owes a screenplay, and that doesn’t seem likely to work out well.

In light of all this, Sam is surprised when a stranger, Mara (Beatrice Fletcher), offers to buy him a drink after he has failed to set up a tab at the local bar. He’s wary – in the circumstances, most horror fans, like those at Frightfest 2024, where this screened, would be downright suspicious – but addicted as he is, he’s not really in a position to refuse. Mara tells him that she’s a counsellor. She suggests that she counsel him, there in the pub, across a number of sessions. he’ll get drinks out of it. Given that’s usually the counselee who pays, it’s clear that something strange is going on. Is she really just doing a good deed? Is she newly trained and practising on him? Whatever it is, it’s deeply unethical – but he gradually settles into it. After all, he has no-one else to talk to.

Through this framework, writer/director Damon Rickard teases out Sam’s story, but it’s clear from the start that (as anyone might, really), he’s keeping secrets. Rickard doesn’t keep all of his for long – pretty quickly we flip over to Mara’s story and get some explanation for her behaviour – but some are held in abeyance all the way to the end.

There’s a lot of potential in this concept. The script struggles in places, however, and the actors aren’t really up to carrying these high pressure roles, where every little thing they do is under close scrutiny. There are also some odd casting choices. Amber Doig-Thorne is just too young to convince in the role she’s given.

Heavy on ominous music from the outset, the film too often comes across like it’s trying to tell us what to feel rather than letting it happen naturally. The sound is overblown in places and, in the context of the pub scenes, will make you feel as if you’ve just staggered in with a hangover. It is a first feature, so one hopes that Rickard will get on top of these problems going forwards. With some refinement it could be very effective. As it is, it still manages to tell a successful story.