THE WOLF HOUR delivers Hitchcockian tension in a densely layered world with a role that will exploit every fibre of Academy Award nominee Naomi Watt’s emotional range as an actor.

June (Watts) was once a celebrated counter-culture figure, but that was a decade ago. She now lives alone in her fifth floor South Bronx apartment, having all but cut herself off from the outside world. It’s the notorious “Summer of Sam” and June only has to look out of her window to see the violence escalating with the brutal summer heat.

The city is on a knife’s edge, a pressure-cooker about to explode into the incendiary 1977 New York blackout riots.

The city is on a knife’s edge, a pressure-cooker about to explode into the incendiary 1977 New York blackout riots.