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Await Further Instructions
UK 2018
produced by Alan Latham, Jack Tarling, Kirsty Bell (executive), Gary Collins (executive), Michael Cowan (executive), Jason Garrett (executive), Phil McKenzie (executive), David Rogers (executive), Paul Ward (executive) for Goldfinch Studios, Shudder Films, Premiere Picture
directed by Johnny Kevorkian
starring Sam Gittins, Neerja Naik, Grant Masters, Abigail Cruttenden, Holly Weston, Kris Saddler, David Bradley
written by Gavin Williams, music by Richard Wells
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Nick (Sam Gittins) and his girlfriend Annji (Neerja Naik) have decided
to spend Christmas with Nick's family ... which is not a good idea as
Annji's lineage is of foreign decent and Nick's granddad (David Bradley)
is pretty much an overt racist, Nick's pregnant sister Kate (Holly Weston)
a hypocritical fool with her husband being a muscle-bound weakling, Nick's
father Tony (Grant Masters) someone who demands respect in any situation,
even if he's horribly wrong most of the time, and his mum Beth (Abigail
Cruttenden) is just too used to her husband to putting up any form of
resistance. So it comes as little surprise that Nick and Annji want to
sneak out Christmas Day morning ... but find the whole house enmeshed in
some sort of metal, with no way of even seeing the outside. But the TV
flashes on and tells them to "await further instructions" -
which Tony is only too happy to do and orders his family to do as well.
But the "further instructions" become wilder and wilder, from
warning the family to not eat any food in their home to ordering them to
vaccinate themselves with a vaccine that has come down the chimney - which
ultimately kills granddad - to pretty much making them isolate the
"foreign agent", who they (except for Nick) are quick to
identify as Annji, even though she has been the coolest head so far. But
whatever they try, the situation gets more and more out of hand, and
tensions arise which ultimately lead to Kate's death, Tony's losing it,
rooms being gassed, and the discovery that an alien being might be behind
all of this. And yet, our family is still trapped in this game they don't
know the rules of ... Await Further Instructions plays a
very clever riff on the "humankind is its own worst enemy"
theme, putting its heroes in a rather absurd situation and letting them
break before the audience's very eyes. This all works thanks to a tight
script, a tense directorial effort that makes perfect use of the limited
locations, and a very strong cast. Only the ending might be a bit too
tentacle-heavy and too directly influenced by Cronenberg's classic Videodrome,
but it's a pretty fascinating movie still.
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review © by Mike Haberfelner
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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes, cuddly toys and shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill Your Bones to is all of that.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to -
a collection of short stories and mini-plays ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle,
all thought up by the twisted mind of screenwriter and film reviewer Michael Haberfelner.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to
the new anthology by Michael Haberfelner
Out now from Amazon!!! |
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