The Scouting Book for Boys

Teenagers David and Emily are inseparable friends, who live year-round on a crummy seaside caravan park on the East Anglian coast. They play games of chase among the caravans, scare sheep in surrounding fields and steal from the sweet shop on site. The friends, although the same age, are at different stages of their development; he still looks boyish, she is already flirting with Steve, the much older security guard on site. But the pair are equally emotionally inarticulate and struggling to understand their nascent lust; as the increasingly dark story unfolds, we understand that The Scouting Book for Boys is a snapshot of that moment in our lives when our minds and bodies are caught in a battle between child and adult.

David (Thomas Turgoose) and Emily (Holliday Grainger) both have neglectful single parents; his the site’s “entertainment” organiser (where entertainment is karaoke and bingo), who is a widower, hers a drunk divorcee. So the children spend all their time together and David has become, as Emily ominously points out, a brother to her. When her mum (Susan Lynch) announces Emily is to go and live with her dad, David and Emily forge a plan to hide her in a cave on the beach (where David’s titular book, with its tips on camping, comes in handy). But things aren’t all as they seem - Emily has another reason for wanting to disappear for a while, and David’s love for her is not as puppyish as it first looks. The “disappearance” starts a major police hunt, then a vigilante attack and David, still emotionally a child despite his adult lust for Emily, is quickly out of his depth as events teeter out of his control.

Tom Harper’s feature debut, from a script by Shameless and Skins writer Jack Thorne, expertly tells the youths’ story, but struggles with the adults’. The parents are one-note ghastly (Lynch appears to have based her characterisation on Amy Winehouse, complete with matted wig and tarty clothes) while the police, led by Steven Mackintosh, are portrayed as universally stupid and incompetent, which is just lazy. The film’s twist, however, is shocking and comes out of the blue.

The two young leads are superb but the adults (with the exception of Rafe Spall as security guard Steve) appear cartoonish in comparison with Turgoose (This is England, Somers Town) and Grainger’s restrained and deeply affecting performances. The film is beautifully shot by Robbie Ryan (Red Road, Fish Tank), whose almost Polaroidish scenes instantly take one back to those seemingly everlasting childhood summers in our collective memory, and the music - by Jack C Arnold and Noah and the Whale - is used to great, haunting effect. Harper’s feature debut, while ultimately not knowing where to go with its narrative, is none the less very impressive.

• The Scouting Book for Boys is on nationwide UK release from Friday
• Find Noah and the Whale music on Amazon