Here’s what we discover from the earliest scenes of Roof (2026): Dev (Asif Ali) doesn’t come across as a very nice person. As he practices affirmations into the mirror while getting ready for his working day, he’s concurrently ignoring voicemails from both his girlfriend and his mother. He doesn’t have time for their special pleadings; today’s the day he’s going to change his life. Which is a bit like the Confucian curse, ‘may you live in interesting times’, as his life is certainly about to change.
Dev works in finance and, thanks to some insider trading, he’s poised to plunge a lot of company money into what turns out to be a bad tip. The worst, in fact, and he compounds this by making the same error again, thinking the whole thing is some test of his nerve, rather than an unmitigated disaster. As he watches the share price drop through the floor, his self-interested error becomes horribly clear. So what do you do, just ahead of potentially getting fired and maybe even getting landed with a criminal record? You literally flee the building, in this case heading up and onto the roof for one last smoke whilst you think about what’s going to happen to you.
When he gets up there, Dev realises he’s not even the only person present. He arrives just as another employee, Mary (Bella Heathcote) is mid-argument with someone on the phone, and it’s bad enough that he just catches her launching her device at the roof’s surface which, as you might be able to guess, will shortly be a portentous error when it transpires that Dev has let the door slam behind them. That means they’re trapped up there. It’s a holiday weekend, and just for good measure, Dev had handily ignored a power outage in his race to get the hell away from his desk. So with the workforce of LA all pouring out of their buildings due to the power cut, then heading off for a long weekend, oh and no phone to call for help – what are these two going to do?
If the alarm and panic about being on the roof sets in perhaps surprisingly quickly, then that is easily balanced out by the film’s excellent qualities – all of which are abundant from very early on in its runtime. There’s an earthy, snappy script, solid performances from our cast of largely two individuals, and a knowing use of tone, blending moments of dark humour with rising peaks of genuine tension. Roof also makes the absolute best out of its mostly fixed and limited set, whilst still affording a sense of scale via glimpses of LA just going about its business: it’s one of the most connected cities on earth, but our protagonists may as well be on another planet for most of this film. Diverse camerawork and good incidental music also help to weave these elements together. The only minor error here are some CGI sequences which could really have hit the cutting room floor and benefited the film as a whole; the film is at its best when keeping it simple, clear and believable, which it usually does.
This is such a simple set-up: whilst by no means a horror film, Roof often feels like it could easily become one, and several horror titles have riffed on a limited set and number of characters, seeing these elements through into something ghastly, such as Frozen (2010). As it stands, the film can find the time to be funny in places – pointing out how the world of work with its rules, regulations and vigilance breaks down when that vigilance would actually be useful, be that a lone wolf crashing his firm with a piece of bad advice with no one to stop him, or two people leaving their desks and getting trapped, just a few floors away from where they were meant to be. But it’s not just about work: in fact, it stops being about work, and then it’s about the characters, and who they are once their work personas are sloughed away by hunger, thirst and heat (LA in July is a bit warm: who knew?) Once the humour begins to dissipate, particularly when Dev and Mary’s situation grows more desperate, what we get instead is a spiritual lesson which, whilst never feeling overwritten or overtly moralistic, nonetheless works well as a point of direction for the film as a whole.
Director Salvatore Sciortino has built his career in a range of high-profile projects over the years – including a number of Star Wars titles and the brilliant 10 Cloverfield Lane – but Roof is his directorial debut, and happily it’s a great, genuinely encouraging indication of what he can do now and will in future. To reiterate, Roof is such a simple idea, but this gutsy little indie does great things with its wealth of clear-headed, well-explored ideas and elements. It’s always a pleasure to happen upon an independent film like this; its confidence pays off.