Chick­en

Nature ver­sus nur­ture is the name of the game in Joe Stephenson’s direc­to­r­i­al debut, Chick­en. Despite its idyl­lic, Essex coun­try­side set­tings, the film’s char­ac­ters are teth­ered to a machine hell bent on destruc­tion, one that for­ev­er dredges up the putrid funk that abuse leaves behind. Stephen­son eschews con­ven­tion when pre­sent­ing the con­straints of liv­ing with learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, attempt­ing to make a new and fresh statement.

As the instant­ly love­able Richard, a boy who does not let his tumul­tuous past – or his present – hold him back, Scott Cham­bers deliv­ers an inspired per­for­mance. He stuck with his tor­ment­ed and abu­sive old­er broth­er, Pol­ly (the bril­liant Mor­gan Wat­son). Richard’s care­ful, though mea­gre meal prepa­ra­tions in their squalid car­a­van are heart­break­ing and the sole exam­ple of the love and ten­der­ness you’d expect to see with­in a nor­mal family.

Annabell (Yas­min Paige) bull­dozes in with her fast-talk­ing, city-girl slick­ness and fiery teenage ​’tude, and Richard starts to emerge from his shell. The chem­istry between the pair is pal­pa­ble – he spurs her on to recon­nect with her dor­mant imag­i­na­tion. Lan­guage is loaded, and terms such as ​‘freak’ and ​‘chick­en’ are cri­tiqued for their dark dou­ble-mean­ings. Paige, best known for her trou­bled seduc­tress in Richard Ayoade’s Sub­ma­rine, brings fraz­zled teenage angst to the screen with great skill. How­ev­er, in Chick­en, she quick­ly grows into a more fine­ly-shad­ed pres­ence, adopt­ing a mater­nal role and even­tu­al­ly dis­plac­ing Richard’s pet chick­en Fiona (who, inci­den­tal­ly, is lovely).

Stephen­son uses nature (and the con­flicts with­in nature) as a metaphor for the com­plex­i­ty of human rela­tion­ships. It’s the stand out aspect of the film. When it reach­es its cathar­tic peak – one of trag­ic Greek pro­por­tions – the sym­bol of the wild ani­mal and its need for free­dom shines through. For all of its tor­ment­ed vio­lence and hard-to-swal­low sub­text, Chick­en is a film that shouldn’t be passed by.

Chick­en plus a bun­dle of exclu­sive behind-the-scenes extras is avail­able now on We Are Colony.