Filmikaze!

By: Stuart Hazeldine (director, writer), Simon Garrity (story)

Starring: Luke Mably, Adar Beck, Chris Carey, Gemma Chan, Nathalie Cox, John Lloyd Fillingham, Chukwudi Iwuji, Pollyanna McIntosh, Jimi Mistry, Colin Salmon

Eight talented candidates have reached the final stage of selection to join the ranks of a mysterious and powerful corporation.

I fully admit it: I prejudge movies by their poster. Given that the entire intent of motion picture PR is to get you to believe a film is good enough to see just by its poster, I guess that makes sense. The thing is, sometimes the marketing team goes horribly wrong and I see a poster, like the one for Exam, for instance, and mistakenly believe it’s going to be a tired hybrid of The Apprentice and the Saw movies.

This poor film, honestly. No clever psychological thriller deserves a poster as misleading and trite as that. I’m happy to say that my preconceived notions of Exam were way off the mark. In actuality, it’s a taut, engrossing and almost entirely blood-free examination of human nature. It is, in a word, cool. I’m hesitant to give anything about it away, but suffice it to say that anyone who enjoys the problem-solving aspect of mysteries will enjoy it, and the poster is absolutely not to be believed.