The Assessment 4K 2024 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

The near future. Childbirth is strictly controlled by the state, and not every couple can obtain permission to become parents. Scientists Mia and Arjan undergo a special state assessment procedure: inspector Virginia comes to visit them for a week to conduct a series of psychological tests and checks, including role-playing games that simulate raising a child. During these tests, Mia and Arjan's relationship is put to the test, and they must determine whether they are ready to become parents.

Review 4K Movie

In the near future, where parenthood is strictly controlled, a seven-day assessment of a couple's right to have a child turns into a psychological nightmare, forcing them to question the very foundations of society and what it really means to be human.

In her directorial debut, Fleur Fortune creates a chilling vision of the future in a world where climate change has turned the planet into a wasteland, and severe storms and extreme temperatures, combined with water and food shortages, have made it almost uninhabitable. A select population lives under a dome and a dictatorship that provides a comfortable life—technology, clean water, and electricity—but freedom of choice comes at a high price. Those who refuse to obey are banished beyond the dome to the Old World.

In the New World, people live for hundreds of years thanks to a drug that slows down aging. This innovative technology comes at a price—the combination of a shortage of real estate and figurative immortality means that the population is virtually unchanged, and therefore conceiving children becomes illegal. In this grim world, having a child is a privilege granted to a couple only after a seven-day “evaluation” conducted by a government agent. And even then, the child will be born “ex-utero” — outside the mother's body.

The married couple Aaryan (Himesh Patel) and Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) are engaged in meaningful work that benefits society. Aaryan uses AI to recreate pets that were too hastily outlawed and euthanized to conserve resources. His wife, Mia, works in a greenhouse to create alternative plant-based food sources for humanity. However, more than anything else in the world, they want to have a child of their own.

Government assessor Virginia (Alicia Vikander) appears on their doorstep and slowly, day by day, turns their lives upside down. What begins as a simple interview turns into a strange series of role-playing games, psychological tests, and sophisticated trials. Over the course of seven days, she finds new and unique ways to break Mia and Aarian's will, and no amount of charm her examinees may possess will sway her extremely pragmatic judgments.

Dressed like Mary Poppins, Virginia speaks with the smiling mystery of the robot that Vikander played in Alex Garland's film Ex Machina. She switches without warning between an android-like government agent and an uncontrollable woman-child to test how the couple will cope with the impulsiveness and disobedience of a young child. But as entertaining as it is to watch, this behavior escalates into strangeness so convincing and frightening that it causes the couple to question Virginia's mental health, as she appears to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The viewer will feel extremely uncomfortable, questioning Virginia's adequacy and competence as an evaluator, who unexpectedly turns out to be a powerful destructive force, despite being tasked with helping to bring new life into the world.

The director manages to convey all the horrors of a dystopian future in the smallest but most significant details, even though the main action of the film does not go beyond a remote house on a cliff. The Assessment not only reaches extreme levels of tension, but also maintains it remarkably well throughout most of the film, saturating every frame with a sense of anxiety and sensitively conveying the growing exhaustion and despair experienced by the prospective parents.

Although many of the film's intriguing ideas are not explored in sufficient depth, the gripping final act reveals the full extent of the hopeless world in which the characters live and makes one wonder what kind of person would want to bring a child into this world. The Assessment explores themes of harsh reality versus a controlled environment and what the characters are willing to do to stay in it out of fear of facing uncertainty.