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If you’re looking for something to help you get over the recent disappointment of Jurassic World Dominion, then your search may have to continue beyond this debut flick from director Alice Millar that’s gone on digital release this week. Summer in the Shade ends up a brave but misguided stab at mixing adolescent angst with psychological thrills.

The summer in question is that of 1997, which means that this movie’s nowhere near as memorable as those heady days for those who can recall them. However, it does manage to rescue itself from being instantly forgettable.

For best friends Grace (Niamh Walter) and Asta (Nyobi Hendry) this most significant of holidays in their young lives is to unfold down in Cornwall. That’s actually about all the first ten minutes tells us, rendering it rather pointless in a sense. No real hint at a storyline is provided; don’t...

It’s 1997, and 12 year old Grace (Niamh Walter) is joining her friend Asta (Nyobi Hendry) and Asta’s mother Kate (Rebecca Palmer) on a summer holiday to Cornwall. On the cusp of adolescence, Grace and Asta often play like children, but Grace in particular seems to want to move beyond more childish things. Meanwhile, Kate takes in a younger man named Sid (Zaqui Ismail), who had been sleeping in the woods.

At the heart of Summer in the Shade is a relatively simple coming of age story, much of it centred on Grace’s clear admiration for Kate. At various moments we see Grace surreptitiously observing the older woman, and especially her growing flirtation with Sid, but the major visualisation of this theme comes late on when, after an argument with Asta, Grace puts on some of Kate’s red lipstick, takes her case of cigarettes (or joints?) and walks to the local village.

Stars: Niamh Walter, Nyobi Hendry, Rebecca Palmer, Zaqi Ismail, Fiona Gillies, Helen Masters, Joe Welch | Written by Isobel Boyce | Directed by Alice Millar

Described as a psychological thriller, Summer in the Shade tells the tale of a young girl at the time she is transitioning from child to woman and the difficulties she has with this.

Summer in the Shade’s main issue for me is what kind of film it is. As I said above, the director describes it as a psychological thriller but that suggests something at least a bit more fast-paced than this is. The pace is slower and more heavily focused on the coming of age story of Grace. This is no bad thing though, although the film then does seem unsure whether it wants to go down the horror path or not. It shows lots of hints at this but never seems to want to pull the trigger.

Cornish holiday of two 13-year-old friends is shadowed by ominous premonitions of what will become of them

It’s a sultry summer in the late 1990s and 13-year-old Grace (Niamh Walter) leaves her parents and their troubled marriage behind in London to visit Cornwall with her best friend Asta (Nyobi Hendry) and Asta’s boho-cool mum Kate (Rebecca Palmer). There are woods to mess around in, plenty of time to wonder what kissing boys will be like, and long-leash supervision from Kate who lets the girls run free. Nevertheless, the every-night’s-a-sleepover atmosphere is darkened by Grace’s menace-suffused dreams, rabbit corpses that keep popping up out of nowhere, and a handsome but intrusive male presence in the shape of Sid (Zaqi Ismail), who comes to visit. A shy, watchful only child who is having one of those adolescent religious phases, Grace is troubled by her knowledge of dad Rupert Shelbourne...