‘Dragonfly’ Review
Stars: Brenda Blethyn, Andrea Riseborough, Jason Watkins | Written and Directed by Paul Andrew Williams
National treasures Brenda Blethyn and Andrea Riseborough co-star in Dragonfly, a terrific suburban horror-drama from acclaimed British director Paul Andrew Williams (London to Brighton). Like the recent Restless, it brilliantly exploits the all-too-familiar real-life tension of what it’s like to have dodgy neighbours.
Blethyn plays Elsie, an elderly woman living on a housing estate, whose none-too-attentive, out-of-town son John (Jason Watkins) has organised a system of daily care visits to take care of her needs after a recent fall. When it becomes apparent to Elsie’s withdrawn, living-on-benefits neighbour Colleen (Riseborough) that Elsie’s carers are doing a poor job, she volunteers to help out whenever she can, and the pair strike up a tentative friendship.
Although Colleen appears genuine in her neighbourly concern for Elsie, the audience is on edge from the start, not least because of the constant, unsettling presence of her large bulldog, Sabre, with whom she has a decidedly unhealthy attachment. It’s clear from the outset that Colleen is damaged, and the film plays brilliantly on the tension, with regard to what might happen when their friendship hits the rocks.
Williams paces Dragonfly superbly in that respect, employing a clever series of double bluffs, in that every time Colleen has the opportunity to do something bad (like steal from Elsie, say), the audience is wrong-footed, and we end up questioning our own, let’s be honest, class-based assumptions. At the same time, Colleen’s “neighbourly” behaviour becomes more and more intense, particularly when she buys a pair of cheap walkie-talkies so that they can talk to each other in their bedrooms at night.
When the triggering event finally happens, it is both heartbreaking and terrifying – Riseborough makes you feel every inch of her pain, and the accompanying sense of dread for what’s about to come will have you hiding behind your hands. To that end, Williams pulls off a couple of excellent jump scares, while the finale is chillingly dark and soaked through with real horror.
The performances are sensational. Blethyn is superb, delivering a vulnerable, touching and achingly sympathetic turn as Elsie, but Riseborough is simply extraordinary, even by her own high standards – she invests Colleen with a deeply unsettling quality that ensures the audience is constantly on edge, even when her actions are entirely innocent.
In short, Dragonfly is one of the best British films of the year, an impressively directed and superbly acted suburban chiller that will send shivers up your spine. And if Riseborough and Blethyn don’t pick up any BAFTA attention in awards season, there is officially no justice.
**** 4/5
Dragonfly is in UK cinemas now.
