There’s armrest-clutching brilliance in the way this sweatily tense low-budget British horror lays out a family Christmas from hell, and then cranks it up into something truly gruesome.
Sam Gittins is Nick, who is home for the holidays for the first time in a few years, bringing with him his millennial attitudes and new-ish British-Indian girlfriend Annji (Neerja Naik). Poor Annji: the family are awful enough without the impending apocalypse – Nick’s dad is a controlling bully, his sister is small-minded (in that “I’m not being funny but ...” way) and granddad is a miserable old racist.
For the first half-hour, the film plays out like a straight meet-the-parents drama – though not a particularly subtle one. Director Johnny Kevorkian does an excellent job building tension as the family push each other’s buttons, but the dialogue feels strained and inauthentic in places. Bad things start happening when Nick and Annji try to creep away early on Christmas morning only to find the front door has been barricaded by a metal grille – the windows, too. A message in a retro Teletext-style font on the television reads: “Stay indoors and await further instructions.” What’s happened? Has there been a terrorist incident? A nuclear attack? Or is this fake news?
As the messages on TV become more alarming – “Eat nothing, the food is contaminated” – the paranoid family, now trapped together inside four walls, turn on each other. Is whatever is happening a metaphor for their toxic dysfunction? Has their secret desire to do away with each other become externalised? Interesting ideas all of them, so it’s a shame that Await Further Instructions throws it away with the same old horror film cliches in a finale that fails to satisfy the buildup.
