Chained to a chair in a futuristic prison cell, a woman (Sara Mitch) is forced into a high-stakes game of Taskmaster. With a disembodied voice (not Little Alex Horne) snapping instructions at her, Eileen must compete or risk the death of her daughter, held hostage by the same mysterious entity who keeps demanding that she move pens and pop little plastic balls into buckets. Can she harness her latent telekinetic abilities to save her daughter’s life, and free herself? Well, she only has so many shoes left to throw. Come on, Eileen!
Making the best of its single room setting (reminiscent of cult classic Cube), James Mark’s sci-fi thriller achieves a lot with a little – snappy visuals, a simple concept, and a compelling lead performance. The film loses some of its charm when the husband (a wooden George Tchortov) enters the scene, although it’s in Eileen and Roger’s brittle dynamic that the story’s mysteries truly lie. Is he all that he seems to be? And what revelations are hiding behind Eileen’s amnesia?
Mark and co-writer Matthew Nayman keep things simple until, suddenly, they aren’t. As the curtain is drawn back, a startling endgame is revealed, with the Captivity-meets-Black-Mirror vibes giving way to bits of early Stephen King and ‘80s era Cronenberg. If there are shades of a recent Marvel movie to Eileen’s barefoot mom routine, then Mitch and Mark manage to put even the MCU to shame with the film’s minimalism and gnarly visual effects. A deceptively straightforward concept, done with precision and confidence.
