In the UK, there aren’t many topics that are more divisive than immigration, with a seemingly massive split between those for it and those against.

There are no easy answers, especially for those against it who you would expect would have trouble listening to reason, regardless of the facts.

This quirky film certainly addresses the topic, to a certain extent, before taking its story into a peculiar territory.

Working in London as a private care worker is Joy (Max Eigenmann). She’s originally from the Philippines, but now counts England as her home, with her young daughter Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla) – or she would if she could get citizenship status, which is far from easy. Desperate for that to be the case, she’s currently going down an illegal route, with someone who says she can get the papers she needs, for the right price.

The problem is, that price is pretty high, and she doesn’t have all of it right now, so needs a way of making more cash fast.

She gets a call from a friend, asking her to check in on someone who is ill, who they haven’t heard from in a while. Although Joy has enough on her plate right now, she still agrees to help her friend out and pop round to the house and check on the individual.

When she arrives at the imposing house, she’s greeted by a woman, who thinks Joy is from an agency sent to help her out. Joy doesn’t correct her, as it appears there’s an opportunity to make some decent money here.

Before she knows it, she’s hired on a considerable wage, with her own room to boot. It’s not long before she realises however, that everything’s not quite as it seems in this odd household.

This is a mightily impressive debut from British Filipino Paris Zarcilla, with a script that he’s co-written. It centres around a hard working Filipino woman, who just wants a better life for herself and her daughter.

It’s a film that at first comes across as an allegory for the treatment of many immigrants in the UK, as they are mistreated and abused by their employees, representing the worryingly growing trend of nothing short of racism in the country.

But then it slowly mutates, into something darker, and tonally very different. It’s an interesting gear change, that doesn’t quite work. Zarcilla is keen to amplify the grotesqueness of his characters, but possibly goes a little too far, to the point that the allegory gives way to something more obscure, and the horror aspects feeling somewhat bolted on, as opposed to occurring organically.

Although it suffers from a finale that teeters on the incredulous, It’s never dull, making Zarcilla’s directorial debut wholly intriguing making him an exciting prospect for the future.