Fans of Nuala Ellwood’s bestselling psychological thriller about a war reporter revisiting the horrors of her childhood in Herne Bay may decide to stick with the book after this drab adaptation. Like a black sock that has infiltrated a wash-load of white bedsheets, the story has come out a dreary dull grey. The movie is stubbornly unintriguing despite a fine cast of actors doing their utmost. Even the almighty twist ending fails to pick up the pace.

Jenny Seagrove plays Kate Rafter, a hardened correspondent haunted by PTSD. She’s back from a stint in Aleppo for her mum’s funeral and staying in her childhood home. Seagrove plays it imperiously, eyes flashing; Kate has witnessed terrible atrocities, and seems irritated by the smallness of the lives in her home town. But she is raw and damaged; there are flashbacks to Iraq where she befriended a young boy, and some unconvincing scenes of sessions with a psychologist trying to unpick the trauma of her childhood in a home terrorised by a violent alcoholic father. When Kate starts hearing a child crying in the next door house, no one believes her.

Anna Friel gives a brilliantly messy and real performance as Kate’s alcoholic sister Sally, whose daughter has moved to Australia to get away from her. Sally’s husband Paul (Ben Miles) seems to be the sensible one, holding the family together. Back in Kate’s childhood home the creeping horror-movie shots and jangly clanging music tell us this is a place of darkness, but there is not much scope in the film to explore the idea that awful things can happen behind the closed doors of nice semi-detached houses as well as in war zones – and just not enough heat for the plot to thicken.

• My Sister’s Bones is on digital platforms from 23 February.