Premise: A family wakes up on Christmas morning with all the exits to the house blocked off by some mysterious wall and instructions on their TV to guide them.
Introductory Note: It unsettles me whenever I talk about a movie with no Wikipedia page. It makes me second guess how well I remember the movie. And, in general, I sort of rely on Wikipedia to be smarter than me on all things. If a movie isn't on Wikipedia, maybe I'm going too indie with my movies.
Black Mirror sure has dominated this discussion, huh? My first thought coming away from this movie was "this would've made a great Black Mirror episode". For several years, that show has been the authority on high premise stories about technology's influence over people. I feel bad for anyone else working in that space fighting for recognition. I'm sure it annoys the filmmakers behind Await Further Instructions to see everyone credit Black Mirror for this movie. I know I'm not helping.
As is, the movie is pretty good. I enjoy a good bottle movie: take a bunch of personalities, shake them up, then trap them in a room together. That's simple and effective filmmaking as long as it isn't used as a chance for characters to rotate giant monologues. Await Further Instructions is a killer idea. I'm not sure what I'd do in that situation. Probably panic and pass out. (I don't handle pressure well.) I enjoy a lot of the stuff in the movie about people being exposed for who they really are when you turn up the temperature on them.
My two concerns with the movie are how hard it hits its point and how things escalate in the last act. It hits the commentary of people submitting to authority a little too hard. The dogmatic way the father listens to the TV message is so extreme. A lot of people in that house act like a writer trying to make a point more than real people. The less the plot drives this kind of movie, the better it tends to be.
I guess the movie had to go somewhere by the end. I wish it would've been more about the family tearing each other apart than the mysterious thing enveloping the house taking over. It transitioned the film from unsettling in its ambiguity to more straight-forwardly scary. Think about it. Wouldn't it be so much creepier if the only intervention was the exits being blocked and the TV giving instructions, then it all goes away when everyone - or maybe all but one - are dead? That then cuts to seeing the same thing happen in other houses. I know it's dumb to write the movie you wished something would be rather than talk about the movie itself, but that's just an example. I just with the writer and director had more faith in the premise's ability to scare people. It has enough of the interpersonal dynamics and mystery to be worth watching though.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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