A strange, tender romance starring Bel Powley, and Anthony Mackie fights the ‘giant murder bugs’ who won’t go above 8,000ft in a satisfying end-times thriller

Joy (Bel Powley) and her partner William (Nick Robinson) live in a closed community run by the faintly sinister Our Friends organisation. All of them take pills that dull the emotions and render them “quite content” with their grey existences. Then one day Joy doesn’t take her dose and all the messy stuff of life descends on her. Michael Tyburski’s drama, with its echoes of Severance’s surreal mundanity, tells its cautionary tale humorously and smartly. Powley is terrific as a woman struggling to find the words to express her rediscovered sensations, and the obvious moral of having to take the bad feelings with the good isn’t imposed on the plot but arises naturally from a tender love story.
Saturday 8 February, 7.45am, 6.10pm, Sky Cinema Premiere

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