The first feature of award-winning shorts directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn, Cherrybomb is small-scale but deceptively affecting. Following three alienated teens round a bleak (but Troubles-free) Belfast, the story’s nothing new: they hang out, they cop off with each other, drink and drugs make their inevitable, critical appearance.
Yet while the dialogue is a tad clunky, the young leads — Rupert Grint, in his first truly ‘adult’, if not adult, role, Kimberley Nixon and Misfits’ mesmerising Robert Sheehan — share an authentic chemistry, while D’Sa and Leyburn’s visual flourishes lift it beyond its TV drama themes to make for a genuinely fresh, cinematic piece. With good support from the likes of James Nesbitt, more emotional grit than we might expect from a teen flick, and disturbing twists and turns that create a genuine edge, this is a promising debut.