I do love a premise that is sheer simplicity, yet yields potentially infinite terror. I’m in, I say! Have at it! So I settled in for a right good terrify, courtesy of The Stolen Girl (adapted by Catherine Moulton from the 2020 thriller Playdate by Alex Dahl). It begins with a mother letting her child go for a sleepover with a new girl at her school and arriving to pick her up the next day to find only a cleaning lady there – who explains that this is just a holiday let and that the last family there have gone. “Dum-dum-daaaaah,” I hope you are saying, otherwise you are in entirely the wrong mood for this stuff.
Denise Gough stars as Elisa, mother of the missing girl, Lucia (Beatrice Campbell). Then there’s Jim Sturgess as Lucia’s father, Fred, and Holliday Grainger as Rebecca, mother of Lucia’s new friend Josie (Robyn Betteridge) and unexpected flight risk. Let the games begin! Who is Rebecca really and what is her interest in Lucia? Is she a woman/mother with mental health problems, a child trafficker, or someone with a festering grudge against Elisa and keen to hit her where it most hurts? Or is it all something to do with Fred’s work as a criminal barrister? Could Sarah Banks, who recently inveigled Fred into a near-affair, have anything to do with it? Also, Lucia has a birthmark on her back that might as well be in the shape of Chekhov’s gun, so that’s going to have a pivotal role at some point.
