Directed by Aneil Karia
Written by Rupert Jones, Rita Kalnejais, Aneil Karia
Starring Ben Whishaw, Ian Gelder, Ellie Haddington, Jasmin Jobson
1 hour 45 minutes
In theaters September 24 and on demand

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

Ben Whishaw has delivered many overlooked performances. He played poet John Keats in Jane Campion’s Bright Star, he was the standout of Cloud Atlas. In his small role in The Lobster, he forced a nosebleed on himself to attract a woman and made it a moment of comedy. Oh, and he’s perhaps one of our most beloved fictional characters, providing the voice and warmth of a certain marmalade-loving, peacoat-wearing bear.

And he goes for it in Surge, a no-brakes, physical performance that looks like it could break an actor, depending on their mental state before taking the role. Whishaw plays Joseph, a miserable security agent working at a London airport. His job requires the same words from him every day. He listens to banal conversation from coworkers in the breakroom as he bites down on his fork. He has to order a private search for a confused elderly man who speaks no English. In this scene, both men feel degraded by the process. Joseph doesn’t seem to have any friends  and his parents don’t know how to show affection. His dad (Ian Gelder) picks him up from work, hits the leg of a pedestrian, and drives away. His mom (Ellie Haddington) has a fragile state and cares more about how his son’s actions affect her than the other way around.

Joseph breaks. Literally. His habit of seeing how hard he can bite on things has its intended effect, and the glass of water he drinks at his parent’s house shatters and lacerates his lip. This catalyzes Joseph’s breakdown, where he does everything from robbing banks to having sex with a coworker (Jasmine Jobson) to destroying a hotel room. Joseph roams the streets of London, exerting a manic energy, constantly pushing his bottom lip forward with his tongue. It’s as if the glass in his mouth opened up a beast. Or is he mentally ill and deserving of our sympathy? Intentions here are not clear. Is this a portrayal of one man’s mental breakdown, or is this the kind of “angry repressed white man exerts violence” narrative we’ve seen in films like Falling Down and Joker? Maybe it’s trying to be the former, but sadly, it comes across as the latter. Right away I thought of Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down, a film where Michael Douglas, stuck in traffic, walks away from his car and goes around with his gun, leaving destruction in his wake. Each modern inconvenience, like going to a fast food restaurant for breakfast when they’re switching to the lunch menu, it interpreted as an injustice. It’s the same here with Joseph, like when his ATM machine eats his bank card and he has to go through the hassle of getting it back.

Whishaw is great, but you cannot divorce his performance from the film itself. I’m usually not one to get nauseated and disoriented with certain kinds of camerawork, but the shaky cam here is excessive. We know that we’re on an anxiety-inducing journey following Joseph the moment he bites glass, why do we need to also feel like we’re always jogging behind him? Surge was directed by Aniel Karia, and co-written by Karia, Rupert Jones, and Rita Kalnejais. This is Karia’s first feature-length film, and it has a dull flow to it, although it’s full of tense scenes. Once Joseph cuts his lip, it’s just a matter of following him from one place to another to watch what he does when he feels like he has nothing to lose. But it’s an empty journey. We’re detached from Joseph as a person. He’s essentially the Tasmanian devil, creating chaos and going so fast that we never really get to see him. It’s hard to stay invested a film with a main character that the film’s creator appears so ambivalent about.