The Assessment (2024)

The Assessment is an ambitious and thought-provoking film with many layers, and it executes on all of them pretty well! We live in a society where the first instinct we have to solve any problem is to throw technology at it. This film, with a low-touch post-apocalypse sci-fi setting, makes you confront the honest, if unflattering, reality of what that looks like from the POV of a couple going through a Kafkaesque assessment that will decide if they are fit to have children. 

One of the central questions it wants you to ponder is the meaning of parenting when it is completely divorced from biology. It then expands on that and interrogates the meaning of existence when you remove all the ugly parts: conflict, disease, and even aging. Humanity has come up with the technology that seems to solve all of our mortal problems, but is that what we want? 

Very nice to see Elizabeth Olsen in her post-Marvel art house era. She’s in her element with these independent productions, serving, queening, and literally mothering. Also, Himesh Patel, that dad bod and those loose fitting sweatpants, that made me feel things. Anyway, very hot leads. Worth a watch!