The Mill

Matt Roush says...

We’re used to seeing Lil Rel Howery playing comic relief, including in his breakout role in Get Out, so the biggest shock in this psychological thriller (on which he’s a producer) comes in watching him play it mostly straight. For most of the 90-plus minutes, he’s the only person on screen as Joe, a rising businessman in a mega-corporation known as Mallard (with a duck logo) who wakes in a mysterious grist mill where he’s instructed to push a stone wheel in a Sisyphean loop for hours on end, meeting an arbitrary coda under threat of permanent “termination.” A dark parable of work-life balance taken to its extremes, spoofing the notion of the daily grind, The Mill has its own moments of tedium, but as the tension builds to an 11^th-hour twist, you might also be reminded at times of Apple’s even more mind-blowing Severance.

What's Worth Watching (Oct 9)