Boy #5 - FrightFest 2021

The lot of a social worker has and never will be easy with the enormous responsibility they carry and coupled with the decisions they have to take. Marjorie (Laura Montgomerie Bennett) is put on the strange case of a young man who was found eating a dog and then attacked a police officer. It’s a troubling time for Marjorie with one of her wards having committed suicide through and overdose.

There’s clearly some trauma and her colleagues George (Adrian Palmer) and Elaine (Natasha Naomi-Rae) are concerned but Marjorie continues with the case. Taking him to a home she tries to get to know Nathan (Lennon Leckey) who is virtually uncommunicative save for words about hunger. Slowly Marjorie teases out his background and why he attacks dogs which are unsatisfactory but do stay his hunger.

Her colleague Elaine who sits in on a meeting isn’t convinced and warns about the danger of delusional and manipulative wards. Despite this Marjorie does build up a relationship of sorts with Nathan who gradually opens up with some strange – though familiar stories and settings – that will activate the radar of any horror aficionado.

Written and directed by Eric Ian Steele and produced on a shoestring Boy #5 however is a tense and unsettling film that slowly develops the Marjorie and Nathan dynamic with solid understated performances from the two leads.

Deirdre carries the burden of the death of one of her wards and its feels logical that she would try and do the best for Nathan. Which she does with some unorthodox research at a Goth club. What then develops is not so much grief as guilt for what happened with Deirdre functioning in a deep depression needing to do right by Nathan, whatever the cost.

It does get a little carried away later on as the bodies start to pile up though the film comes to a satisfactory conclusion.