It is not just recent memories of The Traitors that sparks unintended (I’m guessing) suggestions of reality TV in Ian Hunt-Duffy’s nifty, claustrophobic horror. One can hear the pitch. So we put a bunch of variously twitchy, mostly good-looking young people in a sleek, windowless bunker. Maybe one is struggling with an alcoholic mum. Maybe another comes from a religious background. Here is the twist. Each time someone falls asleep they are expelled. Last one awake wins. Oh, and there may be, well, a traitor in their midst.
No shade is intended. Reality TV draws many of its structures from cinema of suspense, and, though a little rough at the corners, this Irish title does a fine job of spreading doubt and building suspense throughout.
We begin with a party of youngish people arriving for a drug trial arranged by a not-in-any-way-sinister company called Blackwood Pharmaceuticals. Pollyanna McIntosh, always charismatic, appears as the not-in-any-way-sinister doctor supervising the trial. Millie Brady is excellent as the irritable, flattened Claire, immediately identifiable as the potential “final girl”. Abby Fitz rabbits on abrasively as the unfortunate Alison. Akshay Kumar, as Amir, a medical student, is soon suspected of knowing more than he should.
Anyway, you probably won’t need to be told that the penalty for dozing off is more severe than an unflattering photo in tomorrow’s Daily Mirror. If you sleep, you die. To add to the fatal inconvenience, the bunker is locked down for 24 hours.
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It’s a neat premise that Hunt-Duffy and his cast exploit with invention. Deaths are accompanied by lots of satisfactory bleeding from every orifice. McIntosh has just the right sort of domineering authority for a (sorry if this is a spoiler) proxy for institutional malevolence. The young cast slap into one another with great energy. The visual reorientations of looming unease – a door allowing in slivers of light, a black space straight out of Under the Skin – make the best of limited resources
If there is not quite enough plot to flesh out the economic running time then the cast just about compensate with energetic faffing about the stylishly lit corridors. You won’t fall asleep. Which is just as well.
