Most people had never heard of Bridgend until suicides of local youths began to spike alarmingly in 2007.
The once-prosperous market town in the scenic Vale of Glamorgan had certainly become a rough-house, with no jobs, no entertainment, and teenage girls trying to avert their eyes from the loitering gangs. It was actually the suicide of a teenage girl that awakened national media interest, largely because it was so unexplained. In that graveyard of hope, you're not going to be too surprised by a few deaths among disaffected young warrior-class males. But a girl as good-looking as this would normally rank pretty high on the heap. And so the story started to run... and run... until the press was officially asked to back-off.
For this reason, the results are hard to quantify. The crematory manager reports that the suicide-rate remained the same after the press blackout, though he did not specify age-groups. But how did it all start? There is no shortage of theories, mostly delivered by the bereaved. "Drink, drugs and boredom" (starting alarmingly young) was one predictable diagnosis. "It's a gang thing" was another obvious one, with all those commemorative tattoos. Perhaps there was one diabolical orator behind it all, who could inspire suicide as a means to gain immortality. (One headline actually read 'Suicide Is Cool'). Some of the teens talk about it in quite a fatalistic way, one of them even noting the selfishness of the act, leaving so much misery behind for people who had only offered kindness and support.
The one they don't mention is the one I would have raised: single-mum culture. Much of the later half of the film is taken up with a long, emotive lament by one of the mothers, leaving no sign that there had ever been a father around, though in two other cases, a grieving dad is actually there to confide his bafflement at the tragedy.
So the chicken-&-egg mystery remains, with certain locations mythologised as the Black Path and the Snake Pit. Even a local church minister said he could pick up the dark feeling, the chilling atmosphere. And not long after this film was made, there were reports of another spike...