Grimmfest 2018 - Await Further Instructions

Director: Johnny Kevorkian

Cast: Sam Gittins, Neerja Naik, Grant Masters, Abigail Cruttenden, Kris Saddler, Holly Weston, David Bradley

Synopsis: A dysfunctional family awake on Christmas morning to discover they're sealed inside their house by a mysterious black substance. On television, a single line of text reads: "Stay indoors and await further instructions."

Grimmfest say: A classic domestic lock-down drama in the manner of Right at Your Door and What We Become, Await Further Instructions dials up the tension by setting the action during that most fraught and awkward of situations, the British Suburban Family Christmas. The university-educated son and his Asian girlfriend, the horrible racist Grandad, the control freak father, the simpering doormat of a mother, the chav sister and her meathead boyfriend: it's a guestlist guaranteed to get confrontational without any external pressures. But once the action starts, things get...ugly. There's a fairly clear satiric intent here, if you want it; a comment on the current climate of paranoid insularity, post-Brexit, with the sealed-up house reflecting British society in miniature. Then, just when you think you have a handle on the film's intentions, things take a turn for the plain...strange.

Prepare to be mind-blown

What I'm Expecting: I'm expecting, Await Further Instructions to be a claustrophobic, tension-driven human drama; a commentary on paranoia and British society post-Brexit.

I'm hoping for something in the same vein as The Mist or 10 Cloverfield Lane: both were films that used monsters, or at least, the threat of monsters to explore the darkest, deepest recesses of the human condition to devastating efficacy.

I have very high hopes for this one, and if done properly, could easily be in the running for my Best of Grimmfest 2018.