- Patrick Wai6d agoAwait Further Instructions begins with a premise full of potential: a deeply dysfunctional family wakes on Christmas morning to find the house sealed shut and mysterious instructions appearing on the television. The actors are all convincing, but Grant Masters stands out as the controlling and thoroughly unpleasant father. He plays the kind of man who believes shouting louder makes him more correct. David Bradley is equally effective as the grumpy, racist grandfather, bringing just enough humor to a character who is otherwise almost impossible to tolerate. And what a family this is. I honestly cannot remember seeing many movie families this rude, hostile, and emotionally exhausting. They do not merely argue. They attack one another with years of resentment already loaded into the chamber. Even before anything supernatural happens, Christmas dinner feels ready to become a war zone. The low budget is sometimes visible, but the filmmakers use the confined house effectively. The cramped rooms and sealed windows create a strong sense of claustrophobia, while the old CRT televisions give the film an eerie analog quality. However, those televisions also made the time period confusing. If the story was meant to feel as though it took place in the 1990s, the movie needed to establish that more clearly. Otherwise, the outdated technology simply feels unexplained. The later body-horror imagery is one of the film’s strongest elements. Some of it reminded me of the Japanese cult classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man, particularly the fusion of flesh, machinery, wires, and technology. Those moments give the movie a strange identity of its own and hint at something much more disturbing than a standard locked-house thriller. Unfortunately, the story never develops its ideas as fully as it should. The ending is acceptable, but the final revelation is not exactly a surprise, and the movie does not introduce or develop it cleverly enough. It feels less like a satisfying payoff and more like the script finally confirming what the audience had already suspected. Saddler, meanwhile, looks distractingly like a misplaced Jonas brother, which adds an unintended little wrinkle to the family apocalypse. For a low-budget film, Await Further Instructions is competently acted, claustrophobic, and occasionally imaginative. It has an excellent setup, some disturbing body horror, and one of the most toxic families ever assembled around a Christmas tree. But the writing never fully capitalizes on those ingredients. It is not a bad movie. It is simply another frustrating case of a strong concept, committed actors, and a promising atmosphere being held back by a script that needed one or two more rewrites.
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Await Further Instructions was released on October 5, 2018.
Await Further Instructions was directed by Johnny Kevorkian.
Await Further Instructions has a runtime of 90m.
Await Further Instructions was produced by Alan Latham, Jack Tarling.
A dysfunctional family awake on Christmas morning to discover they’re sealed inside their house by a mysterious black substance. On television, a single line of text reads: “Stay Indoors and Await Further Instructions.”
The key characters in Await Further Instructions are Grandad (David Bradley), Beth (Abigail Cruttenden), Kate (Holly Weston).
Await Further Instructions is rated R.
Await Further Instructions is a Mystery, Horror, Science Fiction film.
Await Further Instructions has an audience rating of 2.9 out of 10.
Await Further Instructions has made $3,823 at the box office.