She has a significant nosedive and one night overdoses, recovering unexpectedly but finds herself unable to cope any more, lashing out at work and also suffering from unexplained bleeding.
When her mother Celia (Kate Dickie) calls out of the blue this triggers her to go back to her childhood home despite the two being estranged for twenty years.
No good will come of this.
CW: eating disorder, drug abuse, body horror
This is folk horror that throws a bunch of ideas around to do with fecundity and maternal instinct gone awry. Both in the conventionally bad childhood Laura suffered, but about which we get little detail, and in the more supernatural element that emerges as it goes on.
Everybody in the village is weird, except for her best friend (or maybe ex.) who she left behind. They're all far too spry for their age, especially Laura's mother. There's a kind of horny Wicker Man vibe.
It's really great until suddenly it gets a bit gonzo in the last 20 minutes. Which also seems to prompt the characters to go a bit expositiony in case we haven't twigged what's going on. Which jars as they've done a fair job of building to the denouement such that they didnt need to say much.
Dickie and Rooper are great and it's this last minute silliness (the vicar gets a shotgun and says something about bringing God back to the village) that spoils an otherwise good little horror.
7/10 recommended but it fizzles a bit.