Level 16 (2018)

This is a story based around a bonkers idea, which I won’t spoil for you here as it will take away most of the enjoyment of the build-up to the big reveal as to what’s behind it all, what’s going on and why! You can enjoy the journey instead if you fancy the challenge as it’s available now on various streaming services.

We spend almost all of director Danishka Esterhazy’s (The Banana Splits Movie) film inside what appears to be a very regimented girls boarding school, though it looks much more like a prison.

The girls are all mid-teens (on Level 16) and younger, we assume - as we don’t see any - on lower (or different) levels. There appears to be about a dozen girls on each level and a strict, tall blond woman, Miss Brixil, played by Sara Canning (The Vampire Diaries), who keeps them all behaving as they should. They need to be ‘clean girls’ and follow the strict rules. If they don’t they are dragged off by a couple of henchmen and ‘punished’ (which we don’t see) or locked in a box/cage (which we do).

Vivien, played by Katie Douglas (Ginny & Georgia) is not accepting this whole scenario and tries to rebel, dragging the not-so-convinced Sophia, played by Celina Martin (The Banana Splits Movie), along with her rebellious intentions. To get out of the place. She doesn’t believe that the air outside is ‘poisoned’ and plots an escape between pretending to conform and being suspected by the nice-on-the-face-of-it doctor in charge of the ‘vitamins’ the girls have to take and injections of nasty stuff to keep them in line if meandering from the path! That’s about the set up really, anything else would be a reveal, so I’ll leave you to it.

The acting is decent enough, particularly by the leads, the tone is sinister and keeps you guessing (there are clues for those who look) until the final act. The whole thing feels very low-budget, which it probably is, but it’s well produced, directed and executed for a fun 102 minutes!