'The Flypaper' (Spoilers)

The main storyline is creepy enough – young innocent becomes trapped by adult monstrosity. “Don’t talk to strangers” is the moral at this level. For me however, the desperate ending has a more universal and just as dark a message.

It is about the devolution of a person from one that, while sad and lonely, is not unlike anyone else. She does not live with deprivation, or oppression or violence in their worst forms. She is free enough to take her freedom (and her life) for granted, as she ponders a mundane (worldly) existence. She is human with potential and needs and aspirations. Through a series of events that she cannot control, her freedom and her safety are taken away from her and she only sees that she has lost everything when it is too late.

This is similar to themes found in the well known “To Serve Man” (Twilight Zone) and especially in the less well known “La Cabina” (‘The Telephone Booth’ from Spain). In all these stories, ordinary people become ensnared in something sinister. They descend from human to prey at the hands of villains who have absolutely no respect for their humanity, undergoing a transformation as it were “from ruler of a planet to an ingredient in some one's soup.”

It makes you think of those trapped by circumstances beyond their control in history like the Jews who fled Nazi Germany to France, Poland and the Netherlands, only to still end up in Auschwitz, or the Japanese who were kidnapped on their own soil to become slaves of North Korean intelligence in North Korea.

Bad things happen to good people and our humanity and our lives are not to be taken for granted, for we are only a few steps from losing both, and this loss will become apparent to us only when it’s too late.

I've just seen this this morning.

AS I said elsewhere I could see where it was going from quite a way ahead, by the time they are in the kitchen the way the woman dilly dallies it became very obvious she was not a good person, my only wondering would be that maybe Herbet was not a bad guy just a well meaning oddball and the kindly lady was actually the sinister person.
Though overall I suspected they were in it together, a very big hint is how Herbert let the 2 of them go as he did.

It's a good story but 21st Century times and seeing enough things that show adults being like this slightly dims it's chill for me.
Didnt know it was all filmed around Ely.
I assume judging by the bus itself, which looks a London Bus of it's day and also the Northwood theme (Middlesex NW London Metroland area, I assume that it's based around there, but simply shot elsewhere.