Review #325: Await Further Instructions (2018)
The Twelve Slays of Christmas #11 - Await Further Instructions (2018)
Await Further Instructions follows a dysfunctional family (no surprise there) who get together for Christmas, only to wake up in the morning and find all of the doors and windows barred and blocked, sealing them all inside. Soon after this discovery, a presumably governmental broadcast comes over the television telling them to stay calm and await further instructions. But the instructions become more and more questionable, and the family's paranoia causes more and more conflict- is this a terrorist attack? Does the government have their best interests at heart? Or... are these instructions even from the government at all?
This movie ticks a lot of boxes for me- I love stories where the characters are trapped in one central location, and I like when the interpersonal issues between characters are the star of the show. But most importantly, I love when there's a seemingly normal situation that ends up becoming anything but normal as the characters investigate and explore. I won't spoil exactly what is going on in this film (even though I think the movie still works after knowing the ending, I do think this is a good movie to go in blind) but I like the gradual progression of the weirdness and I feel like the characters (the sane ones at least) do a good job of testing the boundaries when possible.
Back when I reviewed I Saw the TV Glow, I discussed the question of whether a movie can coast by entirely on metaphor or if the actual events of the movie are important too. In that film, it's clearly a very strong metaphor for something (most likely the experience and journey of transgenderism), but I struggled to enjoy the story when taken at face-value. In Await Further Instructions, it's also obviously a metaphor (for people's reliance on media and the way that we tend to follow our preferred outlets as gospel without ever questioning our worldview) but even if you take it at face value, it's still a coherent and believable story. This is how metaphor should be done in my opinion: if the movie doesn't work as both a metaphor and as a literal story, something needs to be reworked.
I do want to mention one thing that this movie does that I wonder if it shouldn't have been removed: the ending. Without any real spoilers, I'll say that there IS a point in this film where it's made clear (clear enough, anyway) what's going on outside the house. Compare this to movies like Cube, where it has a similar structure- characters are trapped in a specific location and they spend the whole movie working together to escape (until one or more of them goes mad for control, yadda yadda). In Cube, however, you never find out what's outside the eponymous dungeon. The viewer is left to speculate whether the Cube was inside a government facility, out in the desert, on an alien world- who knows, the movie is not interested in showing because that's not the point. In Await Further Instructions, however, you spend the whole movie with the characters trying to escape, or even just trying to see what's outside. And at the end, there's a definite answer to that question. The actual result is pretty creepy, and it definitely leaves some questions unanswered, but I do wonder whether this would have been more or less effective if the protagonists all met their end and then we just cut to credits without any answers whatsoever.
All in all though, I think this is a movie that does a great job of capturing the tension of being trapped in a family gathering with people you don't like, and you have to deal with that one relative who would literally kill if their preferred news outlet told them to. And that, is the true meaning of Christmas horror.
Overall Rating: 8/10 Chimney Syringes
A Bit On-the-Nose: In this movie, the family's last name is Milgram, and they live on Stanford street. These are references to the Milgram Experiment (which tested a person's willingness to obey an authority figure even as their demands became increasingly violent) and the Stanford Prison Experiment (which studied the behaviors of people as they were given simulated status as a "prisoner" or "guard" in a prison setting). It's almost as if the writers drew inspiration from both experiments...
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