Exam "Any Questions?"

One of my favorite things about movies are trailers. They are so exciting and bring a lot of anticipation and entertainment to movies. Some of my favorites are The Social Network, Inception, and my new favorite The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. So I always pay close attention to trailers to see what looks good and what doesn't. This film, Exam, is one of the films that caught my eye by its trailers. It look fun, tense, and most of all exciting. So I had been wanting to watch this film for a while. Recently one of my friends from college also mentioned it saying that it was a good watch, so it was about time that I say down to watch this flick. So what did I think of it? Read on to find out...

Exam is a thriller directed and written by Stuart Hazeldine that opens up by introducing up to 8 people all in a room to take an "exam". An Invigilator enters and lays out some rules for the exam. We slowly learn throughout the film that these people are applying for a high position in a prosperous company. When the exam starts, all the candidates have are a pencil and a blank piece of paper. The candidates must find out what the question is and how to answer before the time runs out or before they destroys themselves. Who will get the job? What is the question? Read on to find out...

Exam did turn out to be a disappointment to me. But before I get into why this film was not enjoyable, let me say what I did enjoy about this film. I think the BAFTAs got it right by giving Hazeldine a nomination for directing debut. It was a nicely shot film and I enjoyed some of the slow pans and zooms. There was also some decent cinematography, nothing great but it was a nice addition to the direction. I also liked the premise of this film. It sounded cool and it had a lot of potential too it. The trailer, like I said before, definitely had me excited to see a small little thriller with some nice twists in it. Now I will leave spoiler warning for the rest of this review.


That being said, this film did not live up to its expectations and was fail in my opinion. For the first part I will put some of the disappointment on the build up. I think you went into this film expecting a really cool twist and you wanted something that would meet your expectations. But the build up left your expectations too high. Every "twist" was not shocking or unexpected from my point of view. Even when they tried to be shocking and dark, they shoot someone, they even brought them back to life. I also did not enjoy seeing one of the people in the room be the Boss for the job they were going for. It was too expected and they make the Boss person too obvious. The idea behind "twists" is that you want to have the audience believe one thing and then reveal the seemingly impossible. Unfortunately, every twists this movie pulls is obvious and you can pick it up straight from the beginning.

The acting is subpar at the same time as well. The actor playing the Boss and weird French dude is way too weird and doesn't feel realistic what so ever. At the same time most of the characters seem bi-polar. One minute a character is trying to protect someone and the next they are torturing another person. Then some of these people are supposed to be "smart" since they passed previous rounds for this high level job yet they act like idiots and they couldn't follow simple rules laid out before them.
There were also some digital problems, the lighting would change shades at the most random points and as far as I could tell it wasn't a problem with my computer.

Overall, this film has a good premise and at points is enjoyable. Still the twists do not pay off and the acting doesn't hold the film up. It is a big disappoint but not the worst movie on the block. 2/5