What’s new in cinemas this week: Hoover’s new romance, a Day-Lewis double act, Edgerton coaches troubled tweens and Neeson’s dark new comedy

We know what they’re destined to stumble upon, although suspense might be greater if we didn’t. Prior to all this, a prologue set years earlier introduces Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville as Pentagon bioterror operatives dispatched to the Western Australian desert, where a mutant fungus from outer space has run amok. The threat is contained, the incident duly covered up. But a sample of the fungus is preserved in a test tube, and guess where it’s hidden away?

In a different kind of horror movie, Naomi and Travis’ days would be numbered. But we like these crazy kids, we want them to survive. Their banter is handled very expertly by the veteran screenwriter David Koepp, who has been around the block more times than almost anyone in the industry, bar his frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg (adapting his own 2019 novel, he seems a lot more engaged here than he did as a writer-for-hire on the last Jurassic Park sequel).

The grisly stuff is Jonny Campbell’s department, and much of it is well-calculated to make your flesh creep, though some mutated deer might leave you wondering if they’re meant to look as phoney as they do. There’s an intermittent bid to give the deaths some gravity along with the grossness, though the compassion doesn’t extend to Naomi’s bumbling ex (Aaron Heffernan) who’s introduced having just accidentally shot a cat (the cat doesn’t fare too well either).

It makes sense that Campbell’s CV includes a couple of Doctor Who episodes, even if there’s more gore here than the BBC would allow. The working-class heroes are a latter-day Doctor Who staple, as are the distinguished acting names recruited to add a touch of class. The biggest shock of all is the presence of Vanessa Redgrave as a grieving widow, though it can’t be said she’s used to the full, granting Campbell probably only had her on set for a day or so.

Manville, the cast member most resembling an incarnation of the Doctor, also has less to do than might be hoped. Neeson, in a much bigger role, is as keen as ever to show he can laugh at himself – but despite a priceless moment when his character puts his back out, I wish his ultra-competent action-movie persona had been mocked more ruthlessly. Still, you can’t have everything.

The film is a first feature from young American writer-director Charlie Polinger who worked up the idea from journal entries he made as a 13-year-old at a summer camp. He then added a dash of body horror, a pulsing, percussive soundtrack and lyrically beautiful underwater shots of dancing bodies to produce an oppressively hermetic atmosphere completely out of kilter with the wholesome environment Daddy Wags thinks he’s creating.

Initially, Ben takes the line of least resistance, uneasily taking his place on the fringe of Jake’s group, but his innate sense of decency prompts him to befriend Eli, as well. An intriguing character who affects not to care what anyone thinks of him, he horrifies Ben by revealing his compulsion to self-harm. Ben desperately wants to help, but he’s seized with the fear that he, too, has become affected with the skin disease. And in the background is Jake, ready to pounce on Ben if he shows any sign of weakness.

Polinger’s cast are all teens and sub-teens. Some have acted before. Some haven’t. Instagram produced Martin, a young boxer and skateboarder who scored a special award at the Cannes Film Festival last year where the film premiered to great enthusiasm.

It’s a very clever screenplay with unsettling shafts of black humour and perfect pacing. Having conjured up such a claustrophobic setting, Polinger could have slipped up and let the tension lapse, but the second half builds to a denouement both inevitable and shocking. There are a couple of holes in the plot. Daddy Wags must be an unusually heavy sleeper to miss some of the nocturnal goings-on when the bullying is at its most brutal, but I wasn’t inclined to complain.

Less surprisingly, the result is awkward, even amateurish in many ways, though not without moments of intensity. While the story appears to be pure fiction, family is a central theme: Day-Lewis senior stars as Ray, a silver-haired hermit with a glint in his eye who’s lived alone for decades in a shack in the woods of northern England, where he’s sought out by his more subdued brother Jem (Sean Bean).

Gradually their shared backstory emerges, mostly through monologues by Ray, who isn’t thrilled to see his brother but seems to hope talking will relieve some of his guilt. We learn that both brothers are ex-soldiers who were involved in the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1980s.

We also learn that Ray abandoned his wife Nessa (Samantha Morton, persuasive as always) just before the birth of their son Brian (Samuel Bottomley), and that Jem subsequently moved in with Nessa, raising Brian as his own.

Not much happens in the present tense of Anemone, which often resembles a vastly over-extended student short – especially in its studied visual flourishes, such as a recurring drone shot of trees swaying in the wind, as if we were looking down at a turbulent green ocean.

Some more openly surreal touches don’t work at all, despite the polish supplied by cinematographer Ben Fordesman (Love Lies Bleeding). Likewise, the writing often seems aimed more at immediate shock value than anything else, as in a grotesque story told by Ray about his supposed revenge on a priest who abused him as a boy.

What does work is the acting, although the cast aren’t all operating in the same register. Where Bean and Morton are life-size, Day-Lewis as Ray is a figure on a larger scale: taunting, even monstrous, racked by visible pain, yet in between his bursts of anger weirdly seductive.

From the moment Jem enters his long-lost brother’s domain, it’s clear that nothing about Ray can be taken at face value. Still, he’s an object of constant fascination, precisely because there’s no guessing what he might say or do next.