Containment |
UK • 2015 • 77m •
   • Directed by: Neil Mcenery-West. • Starring: Louise Brealey, Lee Ross, Sheila Reid, Pippa Nixon, Billy Postlethwaite, Jill Buchanan, Penny Judd, Michael Chapman, Rob Rackstraw, Andrew Leung, Walter Hendrix III, Christos Lawton, Claire Greasley. • Music by: Graham Hadfield.     When Mark, a failed artist estranged from his wife and son, wakes to find the doors and windows of his flat sealed shut. At first, he assumes it's a sick joke. Then he sees mysterious figures outside wearing protective suits - 'Hazmats'. They claim it's for his safety but, as the day wears on and the 'Hazmats' infiltrate the building and begin snatching residents, tempers fray and fear takes over. Together with his neighbors, Mark soon discovers that the real dangers are already sealed in there with them.
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Review:
The plot is simple: the people of the apartment block are locked in and they start to fight back against their containers when they start killing residents. While the plot itself is simple, the way information flows both to the audience and the characters isn't, throughout the film the residents find sources, capture others, and make their own assumptions about why they're in the current situation. There's always doubt as to whether or not what our characters know can be relied on or not, which keeps the movie engaging as long as we're wondering alongside them. Around halfway through Containment it becomes a lot more kinetic, pitting the residents of a neighboring building against our characters. It loses steam here and stumbles its way to a sloppy ending.
Characters in Containment are archetypical, with the usual cast (brute, old lady, mute child, mindful everyman, and the conspiracy theorist) for this type of thriller. While each character is clearly based on a template, a couple of them (Mark and Enid) do stick out as being interesting and fun to watch because of their backstories and their actors doing exceptionally with the relatively limited material they were given to humanize their thin characters. Acting as a whole in Containment is good, with each person doing what they can for their characters, but as mentioned before, there isn't much for them to do except for look surprised and yell at others. Character decisions are a mixed bag, mostly smart and making sense in context, but there are a few moments where it was clear that the writers backed themselves into a corner. There is a moment where a character trusts another when she was shown to be lying through her teeth for the entirety of the time the protagonists had known her. Multiple moments like this exist, but the decision making is mostly sound.
Internal logic and writing is also mixed, with clear continuity errors and script contrivances made in order to create more resonance in certain situations. For example there's a scene where one character manages to get a hazmat suit and exit the building, however the suit is suddenly damaged in order to get a moment of shock value. Also blatant is this same character having his cellphone broken only for it to look completely untouched later. While these situations don't do much to change the outcome of the story they do serve to undermine thrills when they become so obvious.
Mechanically Containment is also mixed, making the most of a limited location with convincing sets and lighting. It looks real enough to immerse its audience into its world and the equipment sitting just outside the reach of the characters look intimidating, yet tantalizing enough to make the characters motivated to get there. The complaints that I do have are related to color. Sometimes the film is graded makes the shadows look like a badly transferred movie from the 1980s. Aside from this, the grading washes out vibrant colors like blue and green and makes them look discolored and unnatural. Camera work is solid, but standard, making it look drab instead of invigorating, directly cancelling the tone of the film.
Containment is a largely mixed film in its quality, but has a strong core that is able to keep the momentum going at a solid rate, intermittently pausing for effect, which works both ways. It's at its best when information is questionable and the stakes are unknown, once the writers lay all of their cards on the table it stumbles and never recovers. Even still, that first half is fantastic and since the runtime is so short, Containment is watchable, yet flawed.
Review by TheRadiobox from the Internet Movie Database.
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