Eight talented candidates have reached the final stage of selection to join

the ranks of a mysterious and powerful corporation. Entering a windowless

room, an Invigilator gives them eighty minutes to answer one simple
question. He outlines three rules they must obey or be disqualified: don't talk
to him or the armed guard by the door, don't spoil their papers and don't
leave the room. He starts the clock and leaves. The candidates turn over
their question papers, only to find they're completely blank. After the initial
confusion has subsided, one frustrated candidate writes 'I believe you should
hire me because...,' and is promptly ejected for spoiling. The remaining
candidates soon figure out they're permitted to talk to each other, and they
agree to cooperate in order to figure out the question: then they can
compete to answer it. At first they suspect the question may be hidden in
their papers like a security marker in a credit card, and they figure out ways
to change their environment to expose the hidden words. But light, liquids
and other plans all come to naught. Soon enough, the candidates begin to
uncover each other's background, prejudices and hidden agendas. Tensions
rise as the clock steadily descends towards zero, and each candidate must
decide how far they are willing to go to secure the ultimate job
There are eight candidates applying for a job at a mysterious, world-conquering
company. However, fittingly for such a shady institution, the interview process
forgoes team-building exercises and knotted cross-analysis in favour of something a
little more intense. To this end, the young hopefuls are herded into a nondescript
room, and are faced with an exam, in which they are tasked to answer one question in
80 minutes. However, there's one catch: after a brief, foreboding introduction, the test-
takers turn over their crisp papers to blinding blankness. With the clock ticking, what
will they do? Do they work together? What is the question?

Sadly, it's all a bit blunt and obvious, with early illusions of depth betrayed by easy
pot-shots at money-grabbing yuppies, Apprentice-era reality show stunts and the
desperation that permeates the employment world in the time of recession.

Hazeldine shoots for a style that is twisty, meditative and tense, but Exam comes off
more humourless and vapid. After an atmospheric opening sequence that progresses in
extreme close-ups of the candidates as they prepare for the exam, we are locked in
with them for the duration, subject to their jolts of paranoia, underhand betrayals, and
illogical undulations of mood.

The eight characters are awkward, stiff archetypes that the film knowingly (or lazily)
incorporates, as it is suggested early on that there be no names in the exam room, so
instead we are presented with White (Luke Mably), Brown (Jimi Mistry), Blonde
(Natalie Cox), Black (Chuck Iwuji), Brunette (Pollyanna McIntosh), Dark (Adar
Beck) and Deaf (John Lloyd Fillingham).

With the digital clock counting downwards, Exam lurches forward, exploiting every
idea it can muster for the purpose of building tension: the spoken instructions are
over-analysed, lights are broken, sprinkler systems are fiddled with and, eventually,
the shaky alliance between the candidates deteriorates quite nastily.

There's no doubting the unsettling effect of using a sheet of paper as a torture device,
but even the best ideas (which are few and far between) lack the necessary impact,
due in major part to the pedestrian writing and shallow characterisation.

Hazeldine makes a gamble, and attempts to throw in some ancillary information about
the outside world, revealing Exam's slightly dystopic near-future, with huge pharma-
corporations, and a public in the grips of a thinly-defined virus. Narrated in heavy-
handed, expository references, it is, in the end, little more than time-wasting padding -
something for the characters to do until the next turn of the screw.

Exam's worst offences all occur right at its end, and are three in number. If you're
going to cook up such a scintillating concept, you had damn well better have a
suitable pay-off up your sleeve. Exam's ending bait-and-switch is underwhelming and
insulting, with a character-based twist that plagiarises Saw, and the solution to the
enigmatic test being less a head-scratcher and more a (frustrating) head-slapper. That
this is all puzzled out by the least developed candidate does little to lure in the viewer,
who will probably greet the overly-long, dryly explanatory coda with an open-
mouthed expression of disbelief.

There is just too much squandered potential here. Exam's premise could have, in turn,
provided something insightful, satirical, or poetically surreal in the vein of the locked-
in drama of Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter. Or even a simply satisfying thriller,
with some better ideas, sharper writing and less forgettable characters.

Instead, it is a film with a lot of high emotions, jarring shifts in tone and a conclusion
that makes it all seem pointless in retrospect, or, in other words, a dumb method of
whittling away an hour and a half of your time.