Starring: Bel Powley and Nick Robinson

Written by Angela Bourassa

Directed by Michael Tyburski

Joy (Bel Powley) and William (Nick Robinson) live in a serene near future where The Vitamin ensues that no one’s mood ever fluctuates and no one feels any emotion. Then, one day, Joy is asked not to take her Vitamin for medical reasons and discovers just what she’s been missing.

Stick with the first twenty minutes or so of this. Director Michael Tybyurski and scriptwriter Angela Bourassa fold you into the calm, flat world of Joy and William the way you settle into a lukewarm bath. Nothing grabs you, and nothing should bar the growing sense of unease and the second you realise that, the movie turns.

Powley is the key here, giving a performance that begins as sedated Joyce Grenfell and turns into something wonderfully alive and spiky. There’s a scene where she remembers how to laugh that’s defiant and sweet, and the couple’s new found discovery of sex, which they call ‘syncing’ is ridiculously charming. If you like Severance, and the way the Innies react to the outside world, you’ll get this movie instantly. If you don’t, stick with it through those first twenty minutes anyway.

What starts as something akin to Severance slowly shifts to remind you of Brazil and then Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and then Black Mirror. That sustained unease becomes a fragile emotional core which each act nurtures and grows, never shying away from the dark side of awareness. A (naturally, assigned) friend couple are revealed to be an abuser and victim. Another can’t deal with his libido. A fourth, in one of the movie’s most chilling beats, chooses to give her baby the children’s version of The Vitamin to stop it crying. They’re all free to feel their emotions and none of them only feel the good ones. Adolescence is speed run in the nondescript corridors until Bel sits down with The Woman In A Suit and learns the truth.

Played with scene stealing aplomb by D’Arcy Carden, she tells Bel, and us, everything. It’s a great conceit perfectly executed, the world rebuilt as a blank page erased by casual cruelty and written back across with something like kindness. One Joy and William run headlong across, regardless of consequence.

Verdict: Muted, calm, hilarious and chilling this is big voiced science fiction on a tiny budget and tinier scale. It’s fantastic. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

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