Exam
2009 Directed by Stuart Hazeldine
Synopsis
How far would you go to win the ultimate job?
Eight talented candidates have reached the final stage of selection to join the ranks of a mysterious and powerful corporation...
Cast
Studio
Popular reviews
More-
This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
-
8 people, 1 room, 80 minutes to answer the final question to get the dream job they all hope to receive. Just one problem: what is the question?
Is it possible to make a low budget movie about 8 people in a room interesting and entertaining? Absolutely yes!
This psychological thriller is tense and mysterious and has a great atmosphere, and especially in the first 80 minutes you are wondering what is going on.
The acting overall was great with Luke Mably as the star of this movie as White.
If only the final 10 minutes would have had the strength of the previous 80 minutes this would have been a master piece.
-
Exam is a flawed but fun little mystery that has enough original ideas behind it to keep it going pretty nicely for the most part - but then predictably doesn't know what to do with its ending.
An opening credits montage of each of the candidates sets things up very impressively indeed, and although it has to fight past two or three pretty sub-standard performances, a delightfully slimy and smart-arsed Luke Mably and a suave effort from Jimi Mistry cancels these out.
Far from perfect and with one or two gaping plot holes (they have some pretty strange interpretations of 'don't ruin your paper') but still pretty good.
-
Eight people are called into an examination room and is given simple instructions to get through the last phase of a job interview.
If anyone breaks the rules they're given, they're to be escorted out of the room.
But this isn't any normal job interview.
The film transverses through the 80 minutes time period set aside for the test. The test is not a simple one, and turns out to be pretty mysterious. Who scrapes through successfully is the crux of the story.Setting a thriller in one room is a risky decision. Over the years we have seen several attempted elevator horrors, a few closed rooms, and a coffin flick, all whilst we think back on better times with…
-
Writer Director Stuart Hazeldine's ultra low budget claustrophobic psychological thriller looks big budget with it's solid and sharp editing and it's blockbuster worthy production. He has proved you do not need a big budget to set high standards.
The film is very suited to low budget, we have a single room as the setting for the exam, we have 8 reasonably unknown actors and we have a new upcoming writer director, but don't let any of that warp your decision to watch it.
Exam introduces 8 candidates in the final stage of an application for the ultimate job - 8 pieces of paper and 80 mins to answer the question are all that lie before them... trouble is... the papers…
-
This is one of those great little ideas every writer dreams of, that moment you latch onto a very simple, very cheap way of making something with a fresh concept you can wring drama out of. With Exam, writer/director Stuart Hazeldine pretty much succeeds on those levels - this is a smart British movie that plays like it came from the stage; one setting, a small cast (of largely unknowns) and a controlled idea bursting with imagination and coated with a discrete sense of mystery.
The setting is almost a character in itself, posing numerous questions - where are we? Inside some corporate megastructure? Is this the future? If so, how far away? None of these have answers in the…
Recent reviews
More-
Attention grabbing, intriguing and with good performances, however some of the twists and turns come off as silly and is ultimately a bit too shallow to be truly memorable.
-
Directed by Stuart Hazeldine
-
A really tense thriller about eight people who enter a room for a job interview and told they must answer one question.
The movie never got boring despite it taking place in just one room, the characters were interesting and it kept me guessing right until the last minute.
-
Eight people are called into an examination room and is given simple instructions to get through the last phase of a job interview.
If anyone breaks the rules they're given, they're to be escorted out of the room.
But this isn't any normal job interview.
The film transverses through the 80 minutes time period set aside for the test. The test is not a simple one, and turns out to be pretty mysterious. Who scrapes through successfully is the crux of the story.Setting a thriller in one room is a risky decision. Over the years we have seen several attempted elevator horrors, a few closed rooms, and a coffin flick, all whilst we think back on better times with…
-
Flawed yet interesting and in parts actually quite tense. Mixed bag of performances but overall impressive given the obvious budget limitations. As is often the case the rather good set up and execution is let down by a slightly puzzling and disappointing ending.
-
Honestly I liked this movie a hell of a lot more than I thought I would.
It felt cleverly written and was very enjoyable and horrifying. -
Though it's a slickly made film, Exam is only as good as its last five minutes, which are pretty bad. It pretends to be about the characters - who live in a dystopian world that we see none of and therefore cannot connect to in the least - but the only driving force of the film is finding out the answer to the test. That answer isn't that clever and the way it's revealed is forced.
-
@Camdun_Roar: A great study of "one location" film-making and, though they told me what the ending was going to be, I was still disappointed 7/10
-
There are seeds of extreme promise in this single location thriller, but a patchy screenplay, poor contextual world-building and dodgy performances sink it irredeemably. The notion of placing 8 intellectual and crafty individuals against each other in pursuit of a job is interesting, but the remarks the picture ends up making on the extremes of human greed are superficial at best. It's also incredibly hard to work out what's supposed to be occurring in the exterior world of the movie, a problem given that such information becomes integral to the final act. Some individually strong moments, but mostly just disappointing stuff with a needlessly rookie touch. [D+]