Surge + Q&A (15)

Stansted Airport security guard Joseph performs awkward pat-downs of passengers, completely detached from joke-swapping colleagues including his secret crush Lily. During a visit to his bullying father Alan and emotionally bruised mother for a belated birthday lunch, Joseph bites down on a glass of water, filling his mouth with bloody shards of glass. The burst of intense pain, puncturing the inside of his bottom lip, propels Joseph on to the crowded, cacophonous streets of London.

LondonNet Film Review
Surge (15)

A socially awkward loner loosens the hinges on his fragile mental state and spirals sickeningly out of control in the discomfiting London-set thriller Surge. Shot predominantly on whirling handheld cameras that are almost as erratic as the lead character, the feature debut of acclaimed short film director Aneil Karia is an unnervingly claustrophobic character study that takes a few liberties with realism to tighten the screws on a man at breaking point. Ben Whishaw delivers a fearless performance that lurches between upsetting, pitiful and terrifying.  His steady escalation of nervous tics, rictus grins and wild gesticulations feels horribly believable on the thronged streets of a city where few dare to make sustained eye contact with anyone in visible emotional distress…

The Bedfordshire-born actor is in every scene and seldom out of shot, veins pulsing in his neck as his unlikely criminal makes a mockery of bank security systems or gatecrashes a hotel wedding to focus that pent-up rage on a deeply disrespectful best man. Whishaw barely seems to be in control of his character’s spectacular meltdown.  It’s a shame that Rupert Jones’ and Rita Kalnejais’s script doesn’t always know how to realistically harness that manic energy for dramatic purposes.

Stansted Airport security guard Joseph (Whishaw) performs awkward pat-downs of passengers, completely detached from joke-swapping colleagues including his secret crush Lily (Jasmine Jobson). Each night, he returns home to a flat with a microwave meal and the television for company. It’s a relentless, unedifying routine, interrupted by one selfish neighbour (Perry Fitzpatrick), who insists on revving the engine of his quad bike late into the night.

During a visit to his bullying father Alan (Ian Gelder) and emotionally bruised mother (Ellie Haddington) for a belated birthday lunch, Joseph bites down on a glass of water, filling his mouth with bloody shards of glass. The burst of intense pain, puncturing the inside of his bottom lip, propels Joseph on to the crowded, cacophonous streets of London. A simple act of kindness – buying an HDMI cable costing £4.99 to allow Lily to connect her laptop to a TV – lights the fuse on Joseph’s tightly coiled fury. He orchestrates an impromptu bank robbery to pay for the cable and as the adrenaline rush crescendos, Joseph sprints breathlessly past the point of no return.

Surge is an apt description for the bursts of dizzying delirium that punctuate Karia’s ambitious debut including an unsettling altercation at an airport security gate. The threat of violence hangs over Joseph like a thick smog and Whishaw is ferociously committed to every howl of anguish or gurgle of delusional laughter as he wheels inexorably towards self-destruction. It’s never a matter of if he will snap, just when.

– Sarah Lee