It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for. Adam Wimpenny’s film Roar is a slow-burning look at what happens when a customer gives a well-meaning key-cutter the brushoff. Jodie Whittaker’s Eva has just had a dodgy experience picking up her dry cleaning from Tom Burke’s salacious Mick and Tom, Russell Tovey, who works in the same shop follows her to make amends. But she understandably doesn’t want to know and J.S. Hill’s story turns its gaze onto Tom and the loneliness of his life. It’s Christmastime and so his estrangement from his father cuts particularly hard but as his attempts at contact are rebuffed, something breaks inside of him… Wimpenny builds the tension of the film excellently, giving us a sense of how desolate watching others’ festive joy can make a person and finding genuinely chilling moments to make us jump. Not one to watch on your own in the dark.
