After a brief hiatus due to excessive traveling, health problems, and general ennui, I have returned. I just wish it were under better circumstances.
Await Further Instructions is directed by Johnny Kevorkian, a name I suspect was derived from the famous proponent of euthanasia. If it’s his given name, it’s a sad coincidence. If not, it sounds like the chosen pseudonym of a barely-post-pubescent rube with little knowledge of who Kevorkian was. Name aside, this is his second film after another horror/thriller we’ve already forgotten about, The Disappeared.
Await Further Instructions exists because of our culture’s obsession with films like The Purge and Get Out. Most of the film has much in common with the first entry in The Purge franchise, not to be confused with The First Purge, but it sure wants the audience to believe we’re watching Get Out 2: Get Outer.
Nick, played by Masterpiece Theatre extra Sam Gittins, hasn’t had contact with his family in several years. This could be because they’re an obvious, obnoxious parody of the traditional American nuclear family, but making that identification would be giving Nick far too much credit.
The film opens with what I sincerely hope is an homage to Funny Games, as we see Nick and Annji’s vehicle from above as they make their way to Nick’s family Christmas. Unfortunately, their little game of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is about to go horribly wrong, as Nick’s family generally don’t get along with brown people, leading to some hilariously on-the-nose social commentary regarding racism in England.
After a trying evening of blasé racial epithets from grandpa, the couple attempt to escape in the wee hours of the morning, only to discover they are trapped by a large series of wires surrounding the house. All the television stations in the area redirect to what appears to be an emergency broadcast message, informing citizens that a plague has compromised the area, and they should stay put and “await further instructions.” Of course, this leads to the family quickly lunging at each other’s throats.
Just to get this out of the way, I’m not going to bother holding back spoilers. This film builds up to a climax in its final ten minutes that feels both lazy and out of left field, but ironically, it’s spoiled in the trailer. Hell, it’s even spoiled on the movie poster. If Await Further Instructions is too lazy to conceal its own secrets, I’m not going to bend over backwards to keep the “big surprise” intact.
The foreshadowing in the first sequence of the film is about as subtle as you’d expect – that is, not at all. As an audience, we watch as each instance of foreshadowing comes full circle, beat-for-beat. It’s frustratingly formulaic. For example, when we first see the black enclosure that surrounds the house, the characters point out that there are vents in every room. Annji and Nick see this as a bad sign, and Nick’s father Tony dismisses the idea, claiming that they only exist for ventilation purposes.
Later on in the film, those vents spread toxic gas. Surprise!
Much of the film involves characters discovering that the messages shown on the television are definitely not safety measures from the federal government. When someone comes up with a vaguely rational solution, it’s immediately shot down by Tony due to his slavish devotion to his country, and apparently television in general. Tony is also full of what we now call “toxic masculinity,” just like his father, and he feels the need to act as a strong leader to the family during these trying times. Tony’s shitty judgment calls are what drive the plot of this entire film. By the end, he’s torturing his son for information, suspecting him of being sleeper agent, and Annji is locked away in a room because she’s probably “infected.”
Like most home invasion thrillers with a twist, the vast majority of the film focuses on these characters going insane rather than the unseen boogeyman lurking outside. The buildup is rather lackluster, although when we finally get a big reveal, I was definitely surprised. Granted, this doesn’t mean it was a good twist. In fact, much of the film doesn’t even care to explore its central premise – technology is bad, and it will destroy us all.
Throughout the film, characters are torn between doing what the magic TV tells them to do, and approaching the situation rationally. Most of the time, everyone but Nick and Annji obey the TV. Once Annji uses her doctor/hacker/minority skills to discover the nature of their situation and dump exposition all over Nick, we learn that the house is surrounded by a sentient technological being that just wants to be worshiped. This being uses its wire tentacles to make Tony into a puppet and communicates that way for a time, because it looks good on a movie poster. The baby of Nick’s pregnant sister is born, and it’s implied that the baby is now a conduit for this new technological being. We see that every other house in the area has been taken over in a similar manner, but the baby seems to be the sole survivor. It’s a very bleak ending, and it’s totally unearned.
Dealing with allegory and metaphor in film is like walking a tightrope. It can add a new layer of complexity, creating a much deeper experience, especially on repeat viewings. It can also come across as pandering and disrespectful to its audience, because it’s usually extremely obvious and pretentious. I definitely internally screamed, “OH MY GOD, WE GET IT!” multiple times during this movie. It’s fairly obvious that this began as either a Purge cash-in, or a generic home invasion thriller some poor studio had to find a way to market.
Await Further Instructions’ lame message of techno-phobia has all the makings of a decent Black Mirror or Twilight Zone episode, an apt comparison that I can’t help but make in spite of how cliché that simile is. The correlation between nationalism and toxic masculinity was almost interesting, but it was only used as an excuse for characters to make shitty decisions.
Overall, I was impressed with how unimpressed I was by Await Further Instructions. It does succeed in stringing us along through misdirection as the audience attempts to grasp what’s going on, but its conclusion is too stupid to merit an hour and twenty minutes of the same bullshit shenanigans we’ve seen before in films like The Purge, Funny Games, and [insert name of literally any home invasion movie.]
I recently noticed that Await Further Instructions sits at 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. That number will likely plummet as soon as enough reviewers either put down the crack pipe or provide enough reviews to give an accurate representation of general critical consensus, if that ever happens. It’s being panned hard elsewhere, and this is a great example of why, in many circumstances, the RT system is flawed.
3/10