With its muted color palette and wistful Belle & Sebastian score, no one would confuse Days of the Bagnold Summer for a horror movie, except its placid British setting isn't worlds away from the deceptively calm American environs of Halloween. Bad things can happen when people are bored or lonely for too long, and that's the state in which debut director Simon Bird (The Inbetweeners) introduces Sue Bagnold (Monica Dolan), a 52-year-old librarian, and her sullen 15-year-old son, Daniel (Earl Cave, son of musician Nick Cave). Daniel is looking forward to spending the summer in Florida when his mom passes on the crushing news that the trip has been canceled on account of his stepmother's impending pregnancy.
It means the two will be spending the next six weeks alone together in sleepy Bromley, a fate thrash-metal fan Daniel, who dresses exclusively in black, considers worse than death. Though Sue doesn't police the length of her son's hair or his metal band t-shirt wardrobe, she would like him to pull his weight, so she encourages him to get a job, except no one wants to hire a greasy-haired kid without any experience. He would prefer to play in a metal band, except the only other musicians he can find are a trio of pipsqueaks raising a ruckus in a garage. The forced closeness between mother and son, meanwhile, leads to an escalating series of disagreements and misunderstandings.
If Daniel can be cruel and dismissive, Sue can't figure out how to get through to him. She takes him to the mall, to restaurants, and even to the seaside for a day of sightseeing, but nothing can relieve his funk. After a while, he even tires of his best friend, Ky (Elliot Speller-Gillott), a fellow rivet-head with a brasher personality. A timid woman with a predilection for baggy cardigans, Sue isn't much happier. Her social life revolves around her gossipy hairdresser sister, Carol (Alice Lowe, Sightseers), and Ky's patronizing mother, Astrid (Tasmin Greig), who only exacerbates her insecurities, though she senses a possibility for romance in Daniel's history teacher (Rob Brydon). Other than the family dog, mother and son can't agree on anything. The difference is that she's trying and he isn't.
The script from Lisa Jones (Bird's wife), an adaptation of Joff Winterhart's 2012 graphic novel, risks making Daniel unsympathetic, except he gradually comes to realize his mother has always been there for him. A darker film might suggest that he needs therapy or that his funk could grow into full-fledged depression, but instead, he comes to see Sue as a person with problems of her own rather than some tragically un-cool blob fate has inflicted upon him. Dolan and Cave never oversell the material, even if the former has the more likable role, and even if Bird's directorial debut is rarely as laugh-out-loud funny as he may have intended. The sitcom star-turned-director maintains an admirably light tone that never turns sticky-sweet even after the long-awaited catharsis finally arrives. Recommended.