Sheffield-based YouTuber Luke Cutforth right here ventures into – that dread phrase – long-form content material, with a skinny slip of YA fantasy (drawn from a novel by Caroline Smailes) a couple of humiliated schoolboy retrieved from the brink of self-sacrifice. Cutforth clearly is aware of his manner round a digicam, which isn’t all the time the case on the trade’s lower-budget finish; with cinematographer Josh Winslade, he makes atmospheric use of his main location, Manchester’s Victoria Baths, recast as an deserted spa. But the pacing proves sluggish, and the difference broadly unpersuasive: a fifth-former’s artistic writing project, with clunky exposition and potential parts of autobiography that elicit sporadic cringes.
Cutforth has engineered one noteworthy casting coup. We all know younger Arthur (James Tarpey) has it dangerous as a result of he’s being raised by Johnny Vegas, welded right into a La-Z-Boy and primarily reviving the character Vegas was earlier than a number of caravanning misadventures repositioned him as a nationwide treasure. The director’s relative youth (he was 21 whereas filming) means we must always most likely defer to his perception on the methods of college corridors: snickering cruelties paused for Cats auditions, lecturers pushing packed lunches at these left behind. But the movie’s coronary heart is within the sanctuary Arthur finds on the pool, populated by a sprightly selkie (Rebecca Hanssen) with an insatiable curiosity about human life.
Hanssen is a placing and affecting presence, however the character feels very Manic Pixie Dream Woman (Sub-Aqua Division), deploying her batted eyelashes to rejuvenate a delicate boy’s battered self-belief. Nothing about Tarpey’s efficiency fairly deserves such fascination, alas, and the script will get muddled making an attempt to clarify who’s who. Promising in bits and items, not least for suggesting the subsequent wave of imagemakers aren’t afraid of overtly emotive gestures – a late father-son heart-to-heart is sweetly dealt with. Nonetheless, Cutforth is paddling within the shallow finish for now: extra life expertise – and some extra sources – might solely assist his trigger.
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