As bleak and slow as a week in prison, this oedipal thriller is a very deliberate trawl through a tide of inhumanity. In a remote Irish fishing village, Aileen (Emily Watson) divides her days between shifts as a manager at the local seafood packing plant, her daughter (Toni O’Rourke), a new grandson, and friends Sarah (Aisling Franciosi) and Mary (Marion O’Dwyer). When Mary’s son dies at sea, Aileen’s estranged but still prodigal son Brian (Paul Mescal) appears at the wake.

Vague and cagey about his abandoned life in Australia, his return eventually unties any pretence of close-knit communality. But will Aileen be able to see beyond the love she feels for her only son? Based on a story by Irish producer Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly and writer Shane Crowley, this raw naturalistic drama bears the tropes (miserable patriarchies, cruel unstable economies, humanity dispossessed by poverty, and austere faiths) of other grinding gothic exercises in modern social realism.

These have best been exemplified by the likes of Shane Meadows, the Dardenne brothers, Pawel Pawlikowski, Lynne Ramsay and Joanna Hogg. Ultimately, however, this is Watson and Mescal’s film, the latter in particular modulating and invoking the inky heart of this dark tale. 

God's Creatures screens at GFT, Glasgow, Friday 3 March, as part of Glasgow Film Festival; in cinemas nationwide from Friday 31 March.