East End Film Festival: Containment - Review
Claustrophobia in film is one of those things that only a few can master. See - creating the truly tense vibe of entrapment within your surroundings is something that many have struggled to tackle. Because with cinema, you can take yourself out of the picture and lose that sense of urgency - especially with unlikeable characters. An engaging film absorbs you further into the rabbit hole so that the walls close in and the dirt sheds on your clothes making it impossible to breathe. Buried is one of the few that hammers it home and the recent Ex Machina also captures paranoia in a little box. However, if we were to compare the recent thriller film Containment to any film - we would definitely laud it as the British Estate equivalent of The Cube.
Of course, this film has no booby traps or murder ideas implemented by some higher power. Instead, it’s the idea of moving from room to room with no explicable end to their plight. Add this to the pressure that zombie movies often bounce around and you’ve got a bona fide thriller flick that unearths human desperation at its most strained (which may or may not be the best pun I’ve made).
Containment revolves around an estate, filled with blocks of flats and one morning, all the residents within wake up to find that they are sealed off. Not just cordoned off from the outside, actually glued shut in their flats. Struggling to understand what is going on, there’s a bunch of people in orange hazmat suits and many people outside collapsing. Could this be an illness? What have they been imprisoned? Focusing on divorced actor Mark, when a couple of youths collapse his wall, he discovers that there is a sinister virus floating around the apartments. But with no one giving them information, the newly formed team are struggling to grasp the gravity of the situation. And shockingly, all those around them are experience the same stuffy paranoia.
Which is exactly what director Neil Mcenery-West and writer David Lemon remarkable capture. And it’s immediate, enhancing throughout the production. Containment never suffers with the atmosphere as it is engaging from the start. The first smack upon the window and the shaking of the doorknob to no avail beats this fear into everyone watching. After all, everyone says “home is where the heart is” but imagine if you were a prisoner in your own home? How suffocating would the papered walls be? Wouldn’t you long for freedom? Each pound on the glass reverberates across the screen and panic immediately hits you, racing through your veins. Mcenery-West establishes that dread and excellently echoes it throughout the film.
The acting is on point too. In fact, their role is more imperative to the essence of the film. See without great acting or good fleshed characters, the whole production would descend into this staleness. However, Lee Ross, Louise Brealey, Andrew Leung and Sheila Reed capture that exhaustion and desperation well. Together, they create a group filled with paranoia and it filters through the block of flats like the unseen virus those - impacting them more than the illness ever could. Ross as Mark is a great hero - the everyday man who takes the morally right role, akin to the likes of Carl from The Walking Dead. But with more compassion, he illuminates the screen with his compadres. Leung is terrifying as the young Sergei who lets the events spiral out of control - even capturing poor hazmat worker Hazel. Accelerating events further, it becomes fervent and engaging, especially centred on this incredible performances.
As with most, you’d expect the low budget to hinder the overall piece. But as we follow Mark’s arc, we are engrossed to the bitter end and Containment becomes one of the most visceral, entertaining yet enthralling thriller/dramas to come out of the festival circuit. With a fantastic cast, an incredible storyline and an atmosphere that sits on your chest and begins to suffocate you. Containment is excellent - a superb film that’ll make you curl your toes.
Containment is showing at East End Film Festival on the 9th of July
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