Struggling artist Mark (Lee Ross) wakes up in his flat one morning in the Southampton tower block where he lives to discover the windows and doors have been sealed shut, locking him inside. The bad day just gets worse when he discovers his neighbours – some of whom come breaking through the walls with sledgehammers - are in the same boat, and people in hazmat suits are enforcing a quarantine by any means necessary.
While the dialogue is tainted by a few panic-thriller platitudes, and it is clear first-time director Neil McEnery-West needs to work on coaxing the best from actors, this is a zippy, clean-cut work. Although the odd plausibility issue niggles (how did the hazmat suits manage to seal all the exits without anyone noticing?), the single location set-up is deployed with ingenuity, and it’s pleasing that the script tweaks expectations a bit about who will live and who will die.
Ross, Sherlock’s Louise Brealey and Andrew Leung (Lilting) are especially impressive as desperate folk dealing in different ways with the crisis.
