Electric Light Wonderland

There's a mobile disco, one assumes the titular Wonderland, being unpacked. The lights are checked and rewired, tested and loaded, and the shirts ironed. A young man with a red stripe in his hair, his younger brother, their father. Very little happens but there is a sense that it will, that it might: there is a profound weight of expectation.

There is the statement "we're going to give them the best night of their lives", but it sits in isolation. There's almost no dialogue, some music, some lights, a dog vainly trying to get attention. It's shot in ultra-closeup on occasion, confined, claustrophobic. It has that particular look of kitchen sink verité, contributing to the sense that something is going to happen and it is going to be grim.

There's very little else to it. That's not a bad thing, just part of the stall it sets out - here are these people preparing for an evening, without further context. We can observe, we can guess, but we cannot know.

Brothers Scott and Nathan Etherington are good, interacting well with Alan Jackson as the father. Written, directed, and edited by Susanna Mallin it makes clear that she's got talent - this isn't so much a character study as a mood piece, and it's an intriguing one.