The Beasts is a rural psychological thriller from Spain that has won many awards across Europe and even though we don’t set any store by awards – the multi-Oscar winning Everything Everywhere All At Once is known as Extremely Baffling As Well As Dull in this house – it is a riveting, merciless study of human nature, so cleverly tense throughout that even a game of dominoes becomes menacing. You didn’t know a game of dominoes could be menacing? Trust me, it can. You might never be able to look at a pack of dominoes again without feeling menaced.

Directed by Rodrigo Sorogoyen and co-written with Isabel Pena, the film is loosely based on a true story from 2014 involving a Dutch couple who moved to a small Spanish village in Galicia. But here the protagonists are reworked as French. They are Antoine (Denis Ménochet), who has the bulk of a Tony Soprano but with mournful eyes, and his wife Olga (Marina Foïs).

They settled here a few years back to enjoy a slower pace of life and grow organic vegetables to sell at market in the local town. The village itself appears semi-derelict and the few inhabitants who remain don’t seem well disposed towards the couple. They call Antoine ‘Frenchie’. There are two brothers, Xan (Luis Zahera) and Lorenzo (Diego Anido), who take a particular delight in attempting to provoke Antoine. ‘Are we boring you, Frenchie?’ asks Xan early on when Antoine makes quietly to leave the local makeshift bar. Yet they burn with a resentment that goes deeper than even your regular everyday xenophobia. We learn that a Norwegian company wants to buy the village and its land to turn it into a wind farm but Antoine refuses to sign. Xan and Lorenzo didn’t choose this way of life which, for them, is gruelling rather than idyllic. They want out but here’s Antoine, getting in their way.

If this were a Sam Peckinpah film, Antoine and Olga would surely wake to find their dog, Titan (beautifully played by a German shepherd), hanging from a tree, or shot, or poisoned – I feared that – but this is not a Sam Peckinpah film. This is slowly, slowly, catchy monkey rather than melodrama. This is about that game of dominoes fraught with tension and malice. This is, at least initially, about the petty acts of intimidation directed at Antoine and Olga. The deck chairs outside their house might be rearranged overnight, for example. And there’s a scene in the woods that’s like grandmother’s footsteps.

In the hopes of building up a case against the brothers Antoine starts carrying a video camera to film evidence, which only riles them, and anyway the police aren’t interested. Try harder to fit in, they tell him. Sorogoyen builds tension and a creeping dread not through high-charged close-ups but by staying well back with his camera. There are many shots surrounded by the landscape and skies, presumably to show how small people are. We know something has to happen, that this will likely escalate into actual violence, but not how or when. Or what the brothers might be capable of.

After the midway point, our focus turns from Antoine to Olga, who is as determined as her husband to stick it out and not be bullied. More than that, I cannot say. What I can say is that the performances are terrific all round, that you never feel anyone is playing a part, or that they haven’t lived these lives. The film takes its time in its episodic way but you will be hooked throughout. I said that after Champions, which was based on a Spanish film, that I would never trust the Spanish again. But they have redeemed themselves with this and now I must write to their embassy directly. They’ll be so pleased.