If the start of 2025 hasn’t let y’all know, let me help you out: The future is going to be bad. Real bad. What were once funky fictional postapocalypses have moved from outlandish to landish so fast that if they discover that zombies are real next Tuesday, no one among us will doubt the news.
The Assessment isn’t high-concept Armageddon but a bleak soft sci-fi gem that feels like a window into the fast-approaching tomorrow. It lays out the only three possible reactions to our inevitable impending collective misery: Give up, use technology to deny reality, or walk wide-eyed into a hellscape. If you haven’t chosen which is your plan for dystopia, time is running out!
Time long ago ran out for the characters in The Assessment, which takes place in a world destroyed by climate change and the worst of humanity’s tendencies. So, it takes place at least in the far-off year 2026. Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) are a loving couple who want a child. They’re both scientists of sorts: She is trying to genetically engineer sustainable food and plant life, and he uses computers to make tangible pets.
There are biological guards in place to prevent unsanctioned offspring. You know, because of the murdered planet. To get a kiddo, Mia and Aaryan only have to convince one person: the assessor Virginia (Alicia Vikander). A perfunctory interview quickly gives way to a wildly upsetting weeklong nightmare in which Virginia alternates between pretending to be their ill-behaved would-be child and a full-grown adult who watches them do sex stuff. Yes, it gets very icky very quickly. No, you will not like where it ends up.
From inverting the “born sexy yesterday” trope to pretty genuinely exploring some of the worst ethical quandaries that await us, writers Nell Garfath Cox, Dave Thomas, and John Donnelly deliver a script that is somehow both nuanced and wholly unsubtle. Director Fleur Fortuné’s controlled, measured filmmaking ratchets up the tension while being loose enough to let Vikander and Olsen find their own footing. A scene toward the end between just the two of them is absolutely going to remain among the year’s best. The ending will also stick hard, like superglue on a scabby wound.
Vikander is remarkable, ping-ponging between demented toddler and judgmental Karen. Olsen is equally sensational, crafting a sometimes severe but always sweetly sincere woman who stubbornly believes better days may be ahead. Patel is asked to be a mildly narcissistic dingus and rings that bell well. You know your cast is bangin’ when Minnie Driver gets to pop up briefly during a gloriously awful dinner party.
The Assessment is slow-burn, high-yield speculative fiction of the best kind. It also really, genuinely doesn’t feel like it will remain speculation for too much longer. There is “meeting the moment” and there is simply reflecting it. Fortuné’s film is neither callously resigned nor a call to arms. It is mostly an interrogative, asking less “what would you do” and more “what will you do?” Remember, we only have three options and all feel very bad. Best get to picking.
Grade = A-
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Christy Lemire at RogerEbert.com says “Vikander uses her physicality as a longtime dancer convincingly here, as she did in Alex Garland’s chilling 2014 thriller Ex Machina. She gets a little weird, and that’s a lot of fun. Her demands are both hilarious and horrifying, driving a wedge between husband and wife, turning their ordeal into a suburban version of Squid Game.”
Travis Hopson at Punch Drunk Critics says “The Assessment forces you to consider a lot of questions. Perhaps too many, because a lot of the ideas introduced simply aren’t given enough time. It’s an ambitious movie and that is always to be respected, but there’s a version that still could’ve been better.”
Sarah Gopaul at Digital Journal says “Fleur Fortuné’s feature directorial debut not only achieves extreme tension levels, but astoundingly sustains them through most of the film.”