What is going on here?
This is a question which Screwdriver (2023) poses early, but cannot answer in a meaningful way throughout its ninety-minute (or so) runtime. Lost in a maze of hard-to-follow, harder-to-engage dialogue, with a limited cast, set and – most detrimentally to the film overall – characterisation, it feels far longer than it is.
We start where we stay, in one of those affluent houses which are all slate and chrome, with a young woman called Emily (AnnaClare Hicks) sitting on the sofa. She has a bag to one side of her; it’s unclear whether this is a regular friendly catch-up (though it doesn’t seem to be) or an interview for a home position of some sort (which isn’t too far off), but this is a nervous exchange regardless, with the man of the house, Robert, already promising Emily that she can smoke indoors, so long as she doesn’t tell his wife. It feels like a ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ conversation is about to hove into view, but it doesn’t: the problem here, really, is that no one understands him, but he presses on.
Emily, it seems, knows Robert (Charlie Farrell) of old; she is going to be staying at the house for a while after being blindsided by a relationship breakdown. Robert’s wife, Melissa (Milly Sanders) is ostensibly okay with this deal, but as a career-driven businesswoman she’s painted as terminally chilly. Things are tense, to say the least. And here’s another question, one which is answered far too late in the day to justify the run-up: why doesn’t Emily just leave? Even if Robert is an old friend, there’s more at play here. The guy knows nothing or cares less about personal space and smirks his way through every uneasy chat. Mind you, the way Emily suddenly segues into sharing details in front of Melissa about their alleged shared, cosy youth made me warm to Melissa for a while; presumably, to look at the house again, she’d get great alimony.
More questions: why, when left alone briefly, does Emily suddenly go from cleaning the house to sitting inertly in it – why is she here? Is she really a normal guest? Most hosts would take it amiss if someone started doing light polishing and dusting a day into their visit. Some sort of reply to this comes via Robert as he gets into his next mode as relentless psychobabbler. It took this reviewer some time to realise that he is a therapist by trade; come to think of it, this is only really addressed obliquely, but given his dedication to interminable ersatz psychiatric sessions which discuss things like talking cats, cigarettes and pedestals, you could say he’s keen on his job. Safeguarding concerns are not for here, by the by, which raises an eyebrow. This is, however, a common feature in modern screenwriting, as much as always disrupts the plausibility of any therapeutic set-up, when you consider that ethics are being hurled out of the window to get the take. More worryingly, how do you sack a therapist who seems to be doing it as a hobby?
Under the weight of all these metaphorical situations, Emily begins to break. She’s not sleeping, she’s confused, and she’s not in a good place. Little wonder: Screwdriver is incredibly dialogue-heavy, and lives and dies by its talking; most of the talking is being done to Emily. AnnaClare Hicks, to her credit, does a decent job as an essentially decent, if fragile young woman pitched from one awful situation into another. She has some kind of a character arc, at least, where her opposites do not: she is also exasperatingly easy to push around, just as Melissa is exasperatingly brittle and driven. There isn’t much depth, which impacts upon how all of this is perceived, and the dynamic always feels off, too implausible to generate real tension or engagement. Subtexts are hinted (religion, science, childlessness, even cults) but lost in the riddle.
Screwdriver has decent production values, an attractive set and a lead performance which does all it can with the script, but ultimately the film needed to be and to do so much more. A series of awkward meals and tense exchanges isn’t enough to justify this set-up or the denouement. But, hey, director and writer Cairo Smith is only twenty-six years old and this is his first feature, as well as his first work of this kind: I’m sure there’s a lot more to come from him.
Screwdriver (2023) will be released on VOD on 10th November 2023.