THE ASSESSMENT– 2 STARS

Set in the not-too-distant future, The Assessment examines a very paradoxical setting hinting at somewhat mismatched ominous circumstances. On one hand, the film suggests a dramatically reduced human population due to a possible ecological or similarly apocalyptic collapse. A husband and wife named Mia and Aaryan—played by Elizabeth Olsen recently of His Three Daughters and Yesterday’s Hamish Patel—live in an isolated house near the ocean under some kind of managed energy dome of protection from outside calamity. Yet, they still get Amazon-esque shipments, have communication with family, carry remote work careers, and live in a well-appointed and self-sufficient home filled with A.I. accouterments voiced by Indira Varma (Bride and Prejudice and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning).

Success is looked up by Aaryan and Mia as difficult and reserved for greater societal gain. Does that make the two of them in The Assessment advantageously elite where others are living in squalor or are they resourceful and lucky? They are introduced having a healthy marriage by all regards. Other than a lack of neighbors, what and where are their hurdles inside or outside this dome? That’s where screenwriters Mr. and Mrs. Thomas (Nell Garfath Cox and Dave Thoms) and John Donnelly (The Pass) drop their unique conundrum.

Filled with traditional instinctual desire, Mia and Aaryan wish to expand their family. In this strict future, parenthood is only granted to couples after a seven-day in-home interview named after the title of the film. Enter Virginia, played by The Danish Girl Oscar winner Alicia Vikander. She is the buttoned-up and extremely professional “assessor” here to observe, interact, and test the couple for their suitability as parents. Anyone who’s seen Ex Machina knows Vikander has the capability to couple exotic external appeal with internal turmoil just waiting for the chance to be unleashed. Pair her chops with those of Hamish Patel and Elizabeth Olsen, and this is surely a prospect worth leaning in closer to see in The Assessment. Think again.

As soon as Virginia starts her grading, we quickly see the irrational route The Assesment is going to go. Her first act to throw off Aaryan and Mia is childishly refusing to eat her breakfast, going so far as to fling spoonfuls from her bowl of carefully-prepared food in their faces and echo the curse words the couple blurt out from shouted confusion. This is apparently the test. Send a grown adult requiring feeding and bathing for a week to invade a homespace, throw tantrums, destroy shit, and intentionally create supervision situations that require constant attention and accident avoidance.

LESSON #1: IS THIS REALLY A TEST?-- No offense to the screenwriters and director Fleur Fortuné, but is The Assessment really a test? Depending on each viewer, one’s parenting differences over generations will tint and tilt your view of the film. This probably every non-parents living nightmare. At the same time, there’s bound to be a lesser reactionary range between the new school crowd of timeouts and the boundaried freedom of leaving a child to their own devices and the antiquated “Listen here, you little shit” crowd ready to impose their will and control. Managing a 25-50 pound child through the domestic obstacle course of hazards and stimulations is one thing. Steering a mature 30-something woman over a hundred pounds through the same impediment is another. The active work and level of exhaustion isn’t the same thing or even a fair test, yet you will undoubtedly compare your choices with those made by Mia and Aaryan, as they assume a split between the gentle influence or the stern one.

Not far away from the words of Christopher Walken playing the fictional music producer Bruce Dickinson in the famous “More Cowbell” skit from Saturday Night Live, The Assessment allowed Alicia Vikander to “really explore the studio space.” Fleur Fortuné let her loose, and Vikander is a heck of a catalyst for mystery and stress. Her portrayal of put-on petulance dances between the tones of Jodie Foster’s Nell and Will Ferrell’s Elf, and that may or may not be a compliment to many. The more fascinating performance to watch is Elizabeth Olsen’s. Her trial with this warped version of practice motherhood brings strength while simultaneously crumbling sanity as her performance escalates. Between her and Patel, we eagerly wait to see who will crack first or the hardest.

With this central struggle amid this sterilized time period and setting, The Assessment’s premise longs to be dire, heady, and profound. For instance, later in the film, Virginia has organized an unannounced dinner party bringing over Mia and Aaryan’s parents and also their previous exes. All of them have succeeded in their respective assessments in the past and have the assembled chance to judge Aaryan and Mia for their decision to seek parenthood. Among them, Minnie Driver’s Evie, one of the more senior guests of the gathering, uncorks an expositional monlogue reminding people what the somber times were like after the unseen collapse before the present.

It is a bone-chilling speech delivered acidicly by Driver revealing the drastic history, desperate stakes, and current ramifications of population control. Up to this point, this swell is the darkest and most interesting The Assessment gets. All the while, there’s Virginia under the dinner table making a fuss, tugging on people and objects, and refusing the come out. The heft of the moment is sapped by distracting and obtrusive inanity.

LESSON #2: WHEN INTENTIONAL ABSURDITY BECOMES UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY– These behaviorial swerves and jolts are meant to be psychologically jarring, and they do more than frazzle the marriage stability of Mia and Aaryan. However, when these antics again are delivered by a grown adult we know can turn this persona on or off, they nullify believability. Every silly ass peril orchestrated by Virginia, even as they get more brazen and unorthodox as the week continues, are ridiculously overblown and, more often than not, completely preventable. As The Assessment transpires, the intentional absurdity becomes unintentionally funny for all the wrong reasons.

This effect removes and reduces profundity, and it should not be happening in a probing film being billed as an unnerving science fiction thriller. The Assessment should have us shaking in our boots imagining the dangers around every corner. Instead, we’re snickering at cleaning up potty accidents or assembling complicated children’s furniture as if those activities are labors of Hercules to first-time parents. By the time the assessor’s final ruling peels back a bigger and sorrowful picture beyond the couple’s Tenerife-shot homestead of selective favoritism and cultural inequity stemming from the “vain and vestifial itch” suggested by Driver, we fail to see or feel the heavier point The Assessment wanted to confront us with. We’re too busy tidying up another bleak and futile mess.