Senior Film and Media Reporter
Elizabeth Olsen and Alicia Vikander see the future in 'The Assessment'
In “The Assessment,” a psychological sci-fi thriller premiering Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival, Elizabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel play a couple who want to have children. The only problem? They live in the not-so-distant future, where the state decides who gets to have a baby. So they must pass a dark and mysterious test to prove they’re worthy.
Meet the assessor (played by Alicia Vikander), who comes to judge the husband and wife in their home. Over seven increasingly intense days, she asks them probing, uncomfortable questions before putting them through simulations of the possible horrors that children can inflict on their parents. The final product strikes an unusual and sometimes dark tone that deliberately veers toward absurdity as the pair are forced to question why they want to expand their family in the first place. Director Fleur Fortuné wants the audience to feel “a little bit uncomfortable” as they watch the film. Her actors do, too.
“Making people uncomfortable is really satisfying,” Olsen said in the studio at Variety’s Toronto Film Festival, presented by J.Crew and SharkNinja. “We should all be uncomfortable.”
