If we as a nation are reaching an more and more important juncture over the destiny of labor, “The Mill” is a movie that seems startlingly well-suited for the second. The dystopian thriller, directed by Sean King O’Grady, virtually actually interprets the thought of cog in a machine, following Joe (Lil Rel Howery), a center supervisor inside a serious company known as Mallard, as he mysteriously wakes up in an open-air jail and is compelled to push a grist mill a whole lot of occasions, 18 hours a day. He doesn’t know the way he received there, solely that, as a neighboring prisoner who talks to him by means of a vent explains, you higher preserve working or get “terminated.”
It’s an deliberately spare work — many of the movie is confined to this one small outside house — however its stripped-down nature exposes the movie’s typically graceless execution. Whereas it goals for sharp-edged commentary, the film at occasions reads, satirically, like an A.I. generator took a handful of anticapitalist speaking factors — the ruthlessness of the company equipment, the unwieldy hazard of Massive Tech’s algorithms, the facility of labor organizing — and spit out a serviceable however unimaginative dystopian satire.
The movie lacks any well-executed surprises to assist it push previous one-dimensional satire, and Howery just isn’t robust sufficient of a dramatic actor to maintain a single-setting, single-character movie like this constantly partaking. As Mallard’s pc overlord will increase Joe’s work calls for and punishments, the movie has the texture of an overextended, limp episode of “Black Mirror”: reasonably entertaining, however missing any tooth to its political chunk.
The Mill
Not rated. Watch on Hulu.
