In what has the distinctively zoned-out vibe of another lockdown-born project, Natalie Kennedy’s sci-fi psychological thriller sees Clare Rivers (Rachel Shelley), an author with writer’s block, sign up for a deluxe writing retreat operated entirely by AI. Sealed hermetically into her unit by a virus that corrupts the system, she can’t leave until she has produced a book, making Blank play out like Misery and Ex Machina spliced.
Taking place in a near future where writing is all holographic word processors and genial AI assistants rather than tattered notebooks and half-eaten Twixes, the profession seems to have moved on. Or perhaps not: Clare’s blockage is aggravated by being locked in with only a malfunctioning amnesiac android called Rita (Heida Reed) for company. Reset every day and refusing to open the external doors until Clare has delivered the goods, in the face of the writer’s exasperation Rita can only passive-aggressively reel off: “You seem distressed. Maybe you should have a lie down.”
Given the techie slant, Blank already feels outdated by not touching on recent fears about AI superseding human creativity. Instead, it draws parallels between Clare’s imprisonment and flashbacks to her childhood, where her abusive, blind mother Helen (Rebecca Clare-Evans) holds her hostage at home and forces her to transcribe her own writing. The captive-writer comparison doesn’t fully spark, though, because in this backstory it isn’t Clare’s literary capabilities under question. Too often, rather than digging into the deeper circuitry of writing and creativity, Blank defaults to potboilery plot contrivances as Clare tries to bust out of the compound.
But from the moment it asks an arresting question about what the “right” ending is, Kennedy’s film finally begins to cohere. Shelley – best known for TV series The L Word, but little seen on cinema screens since 2001’s Lagaan – petulantly melts down, working in effective contrast to the diabolically controlled Reed. With some flashes of inspired direction, like an upwards through-the-typewriter shot, this hybrid of fastidious huis clos thriller and trauma drama at least has an in-progress human energy and scope.
• Blank is released in UK cinemas on 3 November.
