Sophie Melville and Laura Whitmore in Apex Predator [Ellie Kurttz]

MIA (Sophie Melville) is finding it hard to cope with her 5-month-year-old baby. Her body’s not her own, Isla won’t feed, the neighbour keeps playing loud music at 2am, and neither of them can sleep.

Mia’s husband Joe (Bryan Dick) is working all hours for the police on a job he can’t talk about. She doesn’t know why he’s avoiding physical contact with her. She’s also worried about their 11-year-old son Alfie (Lorcan Reilley) who is being bulled at school.

Adding a layer of menace to the domestic malaise, we learn that mutilated bodies are being discovered in the Thames.

John Donnelly has said Apex Predator was partly inspired by his own experience of parenting and its opening scenes are utterly credible.

The turning point comes when Mia meets Ana (Laura Whitmore) Alfie’s new art teacher. Ana’s offer to help breastfeed Isla is odd, but when she suggests that Mia can replenish herself and her identity, we enter an entirely different realm of surreality.

Donnelly writes well about the anxiety and grinding sleeplessness of new parenthood but Apex Predator segues awkwardly from domestic drama into ghoulish vampire-cum-supernatural thriller.

Contemporary feminist vampire narratives often play on the idea of women conquering fear and regaining control by channelling their ‘vampiric’ instincts and becoming predators, but much of what follows in Donnelly’s take doesn’t feel that empowering.

It’s a shame because the performances are solid and Tom Piper’s clever set, wrapped in scaffolding, brilliantly conveys Mia’s sense of imprisonment, but the mashing of genres never really gels and, as a result, Blanche McIntyre’s production struggles to ignite.

To April 26
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