Starring Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel, The Assessment is a wonderfully dark-looking dystopian thriller. Trailer and details within.
Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Olsen are no strangers to genre fare, and The Assessment sees them join forces for a particularly intriguing sci-fi thriller. The directorial debut of Fleur Fortuné, it was first screened at assorted film festivals last year, and is getting a US cinema release this March.
At some unspecified point in the future, the birth rate is aggressively controlled to the extent that any family hoping to bear a child has to first endure a week-long interrogation process in their own home. Young couple Mia (Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) are one such couple, and their sleek-looking house is visited one day by their frosty assessor, Virginia (Vikander). As the seven-day process winds on, Mia and Aaryan are subjected to increasing scrutiny, and it appears that by the end of the week even Virginia begins to unravel a bit.
From the trailer (see below), it looks terrific, and reviews from the Toronto International Film Festival and London Film Festival have been largely glowing.
Magnolia Pictures have picked The Assessment up for a US release on the 21st March; its distributor in certain territories is listed as Prime Video, which might suggest it’ll go straight to Amazon’s streaming service rather than cinemas in the UK. We’ll let you know when we hear about a release on these shores. In the meantime, here’s a synopsis, courtesy of IndieWire:
“Mia (Olsen) and Aaryan (Patel) are a successful couple who hope to become parents in a near future where resources are extremely limited and the government keeps firm control over reproduction. They are assigned an assessor named Virginia (Vikander), who moves into their home for seven days to evaluate whether they deserve to move forward in their parenting journey. What Mia and Aaryan are hoping is a routine test quickly unravels into a psychological nightmare, forcing them to question the very foundations of their society and what it truly means to be human.”
