Review: Exam

Exam (2009)

Exam is a 2009 British thriller that has a remarkably simple premise. Eight candidates, one job. Think of it as an apprentice style competition, except this process is decided by one final ultimatum - an exam. The diverse range of candidates have eighty minutes to justify their bid for a job with the faceless corporation that doesn’t like to over indulge their candidates in detail. All the candidates are given are three rules “Do not try to communicate with the invigilator or the guard, do not spoil your exam paper, and do not leave the room”, breaking any of this code of conduct results in a candidate’s dismissal.

The eight candidates for the exam are diverse in both personality and background. Coming from all ethnic groups and with an even split over gender, Exam puts forward a nice mix of the good, bad and the ugly, and to be fair the bad outweigh the good when it comes to morality. Early on in the film, the characters all assign each other nicknames based on obvious qualities: White, Black, Brown, Blond, Brunette, Dark and finally Deaf, a mysterious character who only speaks occasionally and when he does he speaks French. The brutality of the exam is displayed in the first few minutes, showing just how difficult getting the job is going to be, and how cutthroat the candidates will become.

Understandably all candidates are baffled by their hazy objective which only truly comes to light at the end. Characters develop reasonably well, but some characters don’t have such a rich background to speak of. Jimi Mistry stars as one of the more colourful characters, Brown. An ex-military man who likes to gamble and seemingly won’t stop at anything to win. White also takes up much of the screen time, easily the most talkative of the group, and tries to lead as much as he can.

One of my biggest complaints about the film is the boredom I suffered at times during the first half hour. With the candidates trying to work together to conquer the exam, a lot of talking is passed around with not a lot of action. Other critics have labelled the ending as another complaint, calling it rushed and a little cheap. However, I thought the ending was a decent one, and certainly better than the way I saw the film going towards the end. Another film I could compare this to would be the original Saw. Sure, the gore and back story are entirely different in Exam, but the notion of “In the end... all the pieces will fit together” is relevant here, and maybe the ending will make you think of Saw.

Overall, I quite liked Exam. It got a little stale at times because it was shot in one room (Yes, the entire film is actually shot in one room), but this psychological thriller makes it’s mark delivering a well acted, simple story on a low budget, while managing to stay for the most part engaging and towards the end, really quite tense. I would recommend renting this film, unfortunately iTunes only has the buy option for £10, but if you like the look of the trailer, and don’t have a particularly low attention span then Exam is definitely worth a look.

Score: 7.0

Recommendation: Rent