Director: Nicole Groton
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psychological/Thriller
Plot:
Living in a New York apartment complex, a group of tenants finds themselves stuck inside the building when a USSR biological attack unleashes a deadly virus on the country, and as their supplies and faith in rescue continue to dwindle they are forced to take matters into their own hands to survive.
Review:
Overall, there’s quite a lot to like with this one. Most obviously, the storyline here is unbelievably timely and pertinent involving the use of a biological weapon striking the country forcing everyone inside to avoid contamination. This is handled quite well with the overall paranoia and claustrophobia presented here with the immediacy of the group locking themselves up and trying to keep anything and anyone they’re unfamiliar with out of the building resulting in a series of intense and hard-hitting discussions about the nature of the situation. Given that this is all taking place while one of the characters is continually getting treatment for a psychological disorder that she’s been afflicted with that tends to render everything in a wholly untrustworthy manner, this adds a fun uncertainty that fuels the drama of the film quite nicely especially in the latter half when it collides in the back-and-forth battles to highlight the burgeoning turmoil underneath the surface of the film. Graced with a slick production value and a solid style to it, there’s plenty to enjoy with this one.
While this one doesn't have much to dislike, there are some issues at play. The main problem with this one is the seemingly overbearing nature of the characters throughout here as the adults here are hardly worth being around. It tends to focus on these abuses of power with very little attempt to focus it on anything constructive, as the demented rules and unrestricted rule-making is never given any sort of confirmation as to why any of the other survivors would go along with it. It just screams as a plot-point without much context to how they all follow along without any kind of confirmation about why they would agree to do so and really highlights the films' overlong running time. The various confrontations involving the threats for power in the community and all the children trying to keep themselves safe just goes on way too long for what's in store here which makes this one feel like there's too much time here on throwaway scenes that could've been cut out without much disruption to the storyline. This ends up holding the film down for the most part although none of these are truly detrimental.
Overview: ***.5/5
Heavy on the psychological aspects but somewhat one-note when it comes to the timeliness of the storyline, this is a bleak and generally depressing effort that gets bland and repetitive in the overlong run-time. Give it a look if you're a fan of these small claustrophobia-based psychological thrillers, a fan of these indie thrillers or looking for a timely genre effort like this while most others will quickly find their patience wearing thin.
Comments
Post a Comment