Surge review - jittery and joyless | reviews, news & interviews
Surge review - jittery and joyless
Surge review - jittery and joyless
Ben Whishaw compels in largely wordless study in mental collapse
by Matt WolfSaturday, 29 May 2021
On the skids: Ben Whishaw in 'Surge'
Seventeen years after Ben Whishaw shot to attention playing Hamlet, this terrific actor is again playing someone "mad-north-northwest".
Seventeen years after Ben Whishaw shot to attention playing Hamlet, this terrific actor is again playing someone "mad-north-northwest". Marking TV director Aneil Karia's feature film debut,
Surge casts Whishaw as a jittery wreck called Joseph, whose psychic decline is tracked across 100 largely wordless minutes that nonetheless communicate a mounting dread. Possessed of a manic laugh that puts one in mind of Joaquin Phoenix's Joker, Joseph exists at sorrowful odds with himself, and Whishaw pulls you toward the demons of a man from whom you'd distance yourself in real life.