Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Emile Hirsch, Kate Bosworth, Ashley Greene, M. Emmett Walsh, Alex Sgambati, Oliver Moore, Tiffany Smith, Joel David Moore, Gianna Wichelow.

We all have our price, we all have that one figure in our minds in which a stranger could offer us the kind of escapist fantasy in which we come out on top; not quite a deal with the Devil, but a transaction with burdened peace, an arrangement that will test our nerve and the construct of what we perceive as reality.

We have all seen the dangling carrot of riches placed before our eyes in the form of a question, normally something along the lines of “For 100,000 pounds would you spend 30 days in a remote log cabin, with no phones, no internet, no electric supply, no company?” Sounds easy, after all we collectively took to our homes and barricaded the doors for several months, some souls didn’t even have a physical buddy to share their day-to-day routines with…but the kicker is we had access to the World Wide Web, we could use our gadgets to order food, we had, for the first time in history, the means to not be alone whilst being in isolation.

For a million pounds could you be Immaculate, could you truly stand the boredom of existence for a set period of time, could you be with one person and live in a shell of nothing, just white sterile walls, a protein drink once a day, and with the added opportunity to lose half the offered amount on a couple of treats, small, seemingly insignificant, but perhaps worthy of saving your sanity…or maybe adding to the fear that you cannot just lead a spotless, flawless life.

Mukunda Michael Dewil’s Immaculate relishes in the spartan, the obsessed frugality of interaction and the sheer austere nature of strict discipline, a film which works its way to a satisfactory resolve by placing the two connected people into the room and have them survive, broken by reveal, cleansed by their responses to the burden of living within a cell by the greed of their reasons for taking on the impossibility of the challenge.

For Emile Hirsh’s Michael ‘Mikey’ Walsh and Kate Bosworth’s Katherine Frith, the demand on their sanity is almost painful to behold, especially as Katherine is forced to hear from her father in the form of a video message as one of her ‘treats’. It is interaction that, whilst the viewer may see the confrontation coming, the sheer heart ache that it entails, even without giving the background information for their estrangement, is horrific, tainted by the fact that no matter you hide yourself away, you can still be touched by harsh words and confessions from out of the ether. 

A tight film, one of intensity, of adulterated purity, and one that allows the fears of reduced contact and isolation to gallop towards the watcher and thrust them into the mindset of exactly how far do you go to become fiscally rich; and is it worth losing your innocence for. 

Ian D. Hall