Charlotte (2024) Review

Charlotte is an indie British thriller that premiered at Frightfest 2024 and is now available on Amazon Prime.

Roy (Dean Kilbey) is a man who lives alone in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales. He is on the sex offenders register, banned from internet access, and is spot-checked by the police. One night a young girl, Charlotte (Georgia Conlan) comes to his door asking for help which Roy reluctantly helps. The older man sets out some stitch rules for the girl so she can stay at his house for a week.

I have been following Charlotte’s progress for a while on social media. It has achieved a lot for a film made on a £16,000 budget. Being selected for Frightfest is a great achievement for any genre film. It has earned generally positive reviews, including from film critic legend Kim Newman and Antol Bitel for the BFI. Charlotte had an intriguing premise for a dark, twisty thriller.

Charlotte has a striking opening with lovely scenery and the mystery regarding Charlotte coming to Roy’s house. It had intrigue and showed technical skill. Conlan made her directorial debut with Charlotte and the scenes between Charlotte and Roy were unnerving. The house was a tight environment, which made Roy more imposing over little Charlotte and the location of the house made sure escape wasn’t possible. The film manages to be claustrophobic and agoraphobic.

Charlotte did set out throughout its running time a permanent threat to girls. As well as Charlotte’s host has a dark past, the town was affected by the disappearance of a teenage girl, and Charlotte befriended Chloe (Angel-May Webb), a wayward teen who was communicating with boys online. It was particularly fitting since Webb starred in a short film about online grooming. The final thread involved Roy contacting his former criminal acquaintance with plans to sell Charlotte. This development did have a similarity to the 2006 crime film London to Brighton.

Some critics have compared Charlotte to a mid-2000s thriller. Those comparisons were apt but the reveal happened a lot later in Charlotte. This led to Charlotte’s biggest issue, the screenplay. This was due to the film spending too much time with subplots, like a couple of criminals upsetting a local gangster, and Charlotte developing a feud with a couple of teenagers. These subplots distract from the central plot and tension. It didn’t help that some of the acting from the supporting cast was questionable. Charlotte would have benefited from a more streamlined screenplay but it wanted to stand out. The filmmakers were trying to avoid being compared too much to the film that starred Patrick Wilson and a pre-transition Elliott Page.

Charlotte aimed to act as a calling card for Conlan and her co-writer/partner Martin Hardwick. Conlan has plenty of experience working as a TV actress and her youthful look can be misleading. Even though she’s in her mid-20s, Conlan can and does still play young characters. Last year she was in two episodes of Coronation Street where she was playing a schoolgirl. The credits for Charlotte stated Hardwick did every crew role: he was the cinematography, sound recordist, art director, editor, and composer. It was amazing that Hardwick could do all this, allowing the pair to save on crew costs. Even though it cost £16,000 and had a one-man crew it did look like it cost more since Charlotte had a crisp professional look to it.

Charlotte was a film made from a place of passion and devotion. It’s a marked improvement to recent films from the British indie horror scene that are only made for a quick profit, i.e. Alice in Terrorland.

Charlotte was a film with a strong premise and brimming with potential. It was a bit rough around the edges due to the screenplay being a bit too ambitious, but it managed to show Conlan and Hardwick’s filmmaking talent.