The experience of soldiers returning to civilian life is not a new subject for the movies. But the fact that the protagonist of director Brian Welsh's feature debut is a Middlesbrough mum returning from a tour of Iraq makes his low-key, well-acted drama an intriguing one. Joanne Froggatt, who's better known as a talented TV actress (Coronation Street, Downton Abbey), proves herself a formidable big-screen presence as Suzy, the married mother struggling to readjust to life back on a council estate with her husband (Mel Raido) and daughter (Chloe-Jayne Wilkinson). As an incident in Iraq continues to haunt Suzy, her relationship with her loved ones soon becomes strained and a dangerous paranoia begins to take hold. Raido is also impressive as the squaddie husband who has his own dark side to contend with. It may be drama on a kitchen-sink scale but Welsh shows that the domestic war zone can sometimes be as frightening, tense and violent as the real one.

Suzy's a British soldier, born and bred, but fitting back into civilian life after fighting in Iraq isn't easy. Haunted by the responsibility she feels for the death of an Iraqi child, she becomes obsessed with the safety of her own daughter, feeling the need to protect her against a threat that doesn't seem to exist. As Suzy's paranoia builds, her behaviour becomes more and more erratic, until finally, she puts her own child in serious danger.