CONCRETE UTOPIA 15

★★★★★ OUT 1 APRIL DIGITAL

This predecessor to Netflix hit Badland Hunters arrives only a few months after the postapocalyptic original, though it isn’t being released by the streamer. Thankfully, that curious distribution situation is no reflection on the film’s quality. A slick hybrid of High-Rise and Lost, Um Tae-hwa’s thriller follows survivors of a cataclysmic earthquake in Seoul as they form an isolationist community in the only apartment complex that evaded destruction. Offering acute insight into how authoritarianism can burgeon in crises, it’s a riveting spin on the disaster-movie template.

BLACK FLIES TBC

★★★★★ OUT 19 APRIL PRIME VIDEO

A rookie and a veteran team up in this grim-vibes New York paramedic drama from Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (2008’s Johnny Mad Dog). Tye Sheridan is Ollie Cross, the new kid on the block, while Sean Penn plays seasoned colleague Gene Rutkovsky. The obvious comparison is Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, although Sauvaire’s film proves less manic and more depressing, following its central duo as they deal with a succession of 911 calls. Employing a semi-doc style and featuring grizzled turns from Sheridan and Penn, it’s a tough and often unsparing watch.

THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE 12A

Learning curve…

★★★★★ OUT 12 APRIL CINEMAS

Following a spate of thefts from the staffroom, feelings are running high at a German secondary school. Pupils resent the heavy-handed methods used by the teachers to find the culprit, which include anonymous denunciations and the frisking of wallets. Shocked by the tactics of her colleagues, new teacher Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch) believes she has proof of who is responsible, only for her intervention to escalate tensions even further.

German-Turkish director/co-writer Ilker Çatak employs various methods to heighten the drama’s suspense: the camera prowls along the corridors of the school premises, which we never leave; the use of the boxy Academy screen ratio adds to the claustrophobic mood; and there’s a disquieting score from composer Marvin Miller. Yet The Teachers’ Lounge isn’t a conventional whodunit, maintaining ambiguity throughout regarding the innocence or guilt of its characters.

What plays out at this particular educational establishment is a microcosm of an increasingly polarised wider society: we witness how social media can feed disinformation; the inability of opposing groups to compromise with one another; and the dangers of herd mentalities. The performances across the board give the material a genuine sense of credibility, with Benesch outstanding as a principled individual who finds her certainties beginning to unravel in such fraught circumstances.

THE VERDICT Everyone has their reasons in this suspenseful and astutely observed scholastic drama.

DAMSEL 12

★★★★★ OUT NOW NETFLIX

Millie Bobby Brown plays Elodie, a poor villager whose family sells her into royal matrimony for gold. Before she can say ‘I don’t’, Elodie is lobbed into the mountain catacombs as a sacrifice to a savage dragon – but she won’t burn easily. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) keeps the monster in the shadows a little too long, but the mix of lunging jump scares and Elodie’s Ripley-esque survival instincts help beef up an undercooked script. And as Elodie progresses from terrified to resourceful to righteously raging, it’s Brown who puts the most fire in Damsel’s belly.

THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA 15

★★★★★ OUT 5 APRIL CINEMAS

Getting shot of a corpse, as the cast of Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955) discovered, can be a trying business even if you’re not in the middle of a make-or-break house sale. Luckily, Sarah (Shirley Henderson) and husband Tom (Alan Tudyk) have Beth (Olivia Williams) and Richard (Rufus Sewell) to help them dispose of author Jessica (Indira Varma) when she inconveniently hangs herself in their garden. Matt Winn’s farce is an amusingly caustic affair, played with zest. On the subject of suicide, though, it’s perturbingly flippant.