Natalie Kennedy’s Blank delivers an interesting psychological and claustrophobic take on a modern genre trope that’s already in danger of becoming a tired cliché. We’re in creepy AI territory again as Rachel Shelley’s Clare Rivers, a writer suffering a frustrating bout of writer’s block, books a month-long stay at The Retreat, an isolated facility operated entirely by AI, particularly a seemingly benign perma-smiling android called Rita (Heida Reed). Flickering supervising AI Henry (Wayne Brady) offers Clare a touch of ‘human’ interaction, but her writer’s block is stubborn to shift, and suddenly she finds herself trapped in The Retreat, the palm-control that operates the door to the outside world now doesn’t work. There’s a glitch in the system, and even Rita has become unreliable, failing to recall Clare’s history at The Retreat and identifying her as a new arrival every day. Desperate to escape this strange prison, Clare finds herself fighting for her own survival as her new world closes in around her, and Rita starts behaving evermore erratically.

There’s no denying the Black Mirror vibe of the film, but strong performances in what is essentially a three-hander give Blank an edge missing from films telling a similar story on a broader canvas. There’s a sense of creeping dread as Clare’s situation becomes more desperate, and if the flashbacks to her youth don’t always make the point they’re intended to, they go some way towards explaining why Clare is the slightly uptight and neurotic adult she’s become. Blank descends slightly into histrionics in its last act, but this is still a smart, well-considered spin on what is now well-trodden material and, brought to the screen on a relatively small budget, is something of a low-key triumph.

BLANK is available now on digital platforms.