The Scare Salon

Today’s movie is another listener recommendation, though this time I already had the film on my “to watch eventually” list, as I often saw it popping up on Shudder and thought it sounded interesting. It’s also fortuitous that I chose to review it in December because even though I didn’t know it going in, this is a Christmas horror movie.

2018’s Await Further Instructions is a British film that starts as a psychological horror and goes in a decidedly Cronenbergian direction toward the end. Written by Gavin Williams and directed by Johnny Kevorkian, the movie is low-budget but high-concept and should appeal to fans of the TV series Black Mirror, as well as other ambitious, one-location films such as Coherence, which this very slightly reminded me of, at least thematically.

The setup is rather simple: twenty-something Nick (Sam Gittins) is bringing his new-ish girlfriend Annji (Neerja Naik) back to his family home for Christmas. It’s obvious from the outset that Nick is NOT a fan of this situation at all, and only went along with it because Annji insisted she wanted to meet his relatives. We find out later that Nick hasn’t spoken to his family at all for three years, and after we meet them, it becomes very apparent why that is.

Nick’s mom Beth (Abigail Cruttenden) seems mostly okay, if a bit mousy, but dad Tony (Grant Masters) is a real piece of work, one of those rigid, arrogant, “my way or the highway” types who’s always right and thinks everyone else is a weak-ass pansy, including his son Nick. When we meet Gramps (David Bradley), we can also see that Tony is just a chip off the old block, as the nasty old codger openly berates Tony for “only” being an office manager and spews racist comments willy-nilly, lamenting when Britain used to be “great” before all those dirty foreigners came in. It’s like Thanksgiving dinner with that one Fox News-loving uncle, only ramped up to eleven.

After several awkward moments where Gramps can’t seem to help sharing his bigoted opinions in front of Annji (who he seems to think is Middle Eastern, even though she’s Indian), Nick’s very pregnant sister Kate (Holly Weston) arrives with her musclebound chunkhead of a husband Scott (Kris Sadler). These two are pretty shitty too, though in a vaguely lower-key way, but they’re both also complete idiots.

So the first bit of the movie is this horribly uncomfortable family gathering getting more and more cringe-worthy, and after only a brief time, Nick and Annji realize they can’t take any more of this bullshit and decide to scram. Beth persuades them to stay, though, apologizing for the behavior of the others and desperately trying to make everyone get along for the sake of the holiday. The couple grudgingly agrees, but later on, Nick tells Annji that they’re going to get up very early the next morning and sneak out of the house before anyone else is up.

Before dawn, they set out to do just that, but they run into a bit of a snag. Seems the house has been completely encased in some type of impenetrable black barrier, and there’s no way to get out. The TV in the house has also started displaying an ominous message in a plain, VHS-looking font on a greenish-black screen: “Stay inside and await further instructions.”

As soon as the other family members get up and see what’s going on, they try to figure out exactly what the cause of this peculiar set of circumstances might be. Tony, of course, because he knows everything, insists that there must have been a terrorist attack of some kind, and they’ve been quarantined inside their houses to keep them safe. He’s also unshakably certain that whoever is sending them the messages through the TV has their best interests at heart, and therefore any messages must be obeyed without question. Nick and Annji aren’t so sure they’re down with this, but everyone else seems cowed by the overbearing Tony and eager to follow his lead.

For a while, nothing significant happens, so Tony demands that they all sit down and have their Christmas dinner as normal since there’s nothing else to be done. Just before they start eating, though, the message on the TV changes, telling them all their food is contaminated and they should eat nothing. Nick and Annji think this is ridiculous and don’t believe it, but Tony immediately gathers up all the food and throws it in the trash.

From then on, the messages and incidents get ever more bizarre: the TV tells them about a vaccination protocol, then drops a bag of clearly used syringes full of lord-knows-what down the chimney for all of them to inject themselves with. It tells them there’s contamination in the air, and that they should scrub themselves with bleach. It tells them one of their number is infected and should be isolated from the others. With each new message, it seems more and more evident to the viewer that someone is perhaps experimenting on this family, to see how far they’ll go to follow authoritative orders. I should note that the family’s last name in the movie is Milgram, if that gives you any clues.

Not surprisingly, the family members begin to turn on each other as the TV’s instructions get further out there, and shit gets crazy and violent. This was the best part of the movie for me because you weren’t entirely sure why this family was being fucked with like this and who it was doing it, which gave it a terrifically tense atmosphere.

While I won’t spoil the ending, I will tell you that it’s probably not going to be exactly what you’re expecting, and I’ll note also that some reviews I saw were a little confused by it. I wasn’t, but I’m just putting that out there. It is, as I said, a high-concept film, and one that will either work for you or not. I loved the ending, to be honest, as it was deliciously grotesque (if a tad on-the-nose), but your mileage is going to vary.

For a low-budget feature with a limited cast and a single location, this was impressive; the acting was spot-on, the special effects looked great, and the premise was weird and kept you guessing. Await Further Instructions is also a fantastic examination of the pitfalls of blindly following orders, the sway that media holds over people’s minds, as well as the tragic shit that happens when one domineering motherfucker has to be in control at all times and won’t listen to anyone else’s ideas. Anyone who’s had to sit through painful family gatherings with relatives who are unpleasant as all get-out should relate hard to this movie, and even though some of the stuff Dad and Gramps say is slightly exaggerated, it’s not by much.

If you’re into conceptual sci-fi that hits much closer to home, then this should be your cup of tea, so I’d instruct you to find it somewhere on streaming and check it out. As of this writing (December of 2023), it’s available for free on Tubi, Pluto, Redbox, and the Roku Channel.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.