‘We Might as Well Be Dead’ Review: Housing by Neighborhood Watch

A housing board guidelines over a dystopia within the off-kilter satire “We Might as Well Be Dead.” The movie follows Anna (Ioana Iacob), a single mom and safety guard whose position in her excessive rise house is to interview and introduce candidates for brand new housing. The movie doesn’t specify what sort of apocalypse has made residency within the excessive rise so prestigious, however new candidates deal with their adjudication as a life or demise matter, begging on their palms and knees for sanctuary.

Anna wasn’t born locally she now calls each dwelling and employer. She isn’t an ideal citizen by the board’s requirements. She’s a single mom and her daughter, Iris (Pola Geiger), has began to indicate indicators of buckling underneath the closed society’s stress, hiding full time within the condo lavatory. Anna’s tenuous place within the constructing is threatened additional when a neighbor’s canine goes lacking, and an environment of paranoia settles over the neighborhood. Anna tries to persuade her neighbors that the canine’s absence is an accident slightly than a conspiracy, however her efforts are met with rising frenzy, and the mob quickly begins to activate her.

The director, Natalia Sinelnikova, attracts out a way of dread via canted angles and harsh lighting. The digicam is commonly positioned under the faces of the actors, peering up at them from views that appear off-kilter. When the digicam pulls again, the inhabitants of the excessive rise appear crowded into doorways and lengthy dwindling halls. The pictures are artfully crafted, however the narrative lacks momentum. The movie flirts with themes of surveillance and immigrant anxieties, however its allegoric ambitions are regularly thwarted by yet one more neighborly grievance.

We Might as Well Be Dead
Not rated. In German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters.