The Travis's aren't your all-American family of the mom's apple pie, stars'n'stripes and unfeasibly shiny teeth variety.

Behind the lawn sprinklers and whitewashed clapboard, there lurks a seething cauldron of bitter unfulfilment, brutal rejection and dreams gone bad.

The creaking façade is thrown into bleak relief with the suicide of eldest son Matt (Kip Pardue), the golden boy and object of his father's vaulting ambition.

The fall-out is cataclysmic - dad Ben (Daniels), who drove his favoured son to constant greater glory as a champion swimmer - emotionally disconnects.

Mum Sandy (Weaver) withdraws into a black hole of bitter cynicism and waspish sarcasm with only her exchanges with Ben's brother Tim (Hirsch) offering any hint of simple kindness.

Tim, for his part, becomes the target of his father's withering disapproval. Matt was - according to Ben - "the only thing in this family".

So, it not exactly Happy Families. These sorts of Americans - where material wealth and outward appearances mask barren dysfunctionality - are staples of modern cinema.

However, the Travis family are deeper than most down a bottomless pit of grim desperation where the dialogue is composed entirely of brittle exchanges and the family home could double for a pharmacy such is the wanton pill-popping.

It can make for pretty harrowing viewing and debut director Dan Harris doesn't really supply enough light to balance out the unremittingly dark tone.

Weaver relishes the role of the mum who gets through more grass than a garden centre while Hirsch subtly fleshes out the central part of the uncomprehending Tim.

However, it's hard-going and when Sandy comments, "it’s even more depressing than I thought it would be" you have to concede she has a point.

Tim Evans