One of our most-anticipated films to premiere at TIFF last fall, The Assessment marked the directorial debut of Fleur Fortuné, who had previously helmed music videos for M83, The Avalanches, Lykke Li, Travis Scott, and more. The sci-fi drama, starring Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, Himesh Patel, Minnie Driver, Indira Varma, Nicholas Pinnock, Charlotte Ritchie, and Leah Harvey, was picked up by Magnolia Pictures, who have now debuted the first trailer ahead of a March 21 release.
Here’s the synopsis: “The Assessment follows Mia (Olsen) and Aaryan (Patel), a successful couple who hope to become parents in a near future where resources are extremely limited and the government keeps firm control over reproduction. They are assigned an assessor named Virginia (Vikander), who moves into their home for seven days to evaluate whether they deserve to move forward in their parenting journey. What Mia and Aaryan are hoping is a routine test quickly unravels into a psychological nightmare, forcing them to question the very foundations of their society and what it truly means to be human.”
Jared Mobarak said in his review, “The test is about more than mere supervision––though that’s pretty important when you consider the myriad ways a young child could get themselves killed in and around a home that’s never heard the word “childproof.” It’s also about patience. Empathy. Responsibility. Mia and Aaryan are very career-oriented and living in a world where children aren’t allowed renders it difficult to flip the switch that shifts work into second place. So Virginia pushes them. And pushes some more until the fact that she is very much not a child begins to taint the results. At some point you wonder how this became the process––it seems more like setting them up to fail than preparing them to succeed.”
See the trailer below.