Wasteman

With its brutal balls-to-the-jail-wall action, Cal McMau’s directorial debut Wasteman feels like yet another overly familiar entry to the prison movie genre – until it taps into a universally relatable nightmare: the dodgy roommate.

This semi-found footage experiment follows mild-mannered inmate Taylor (The Long Walk’s David Jonsson) as he eyes early parole after a decade inside. Sentenced for a crime he’s long since repented for, Taylor is the institution’s resident barber, stew chef and junkie. When no one’s looking, he snorts pills and smokes the occasional spliff to take his mind off the monotony.

But when our likeable hero crosses paths with new cellmate Dee (Tom Blyth), the film turns into a study of a roomie from hell. Dee makes his presence felt with a truckload of contraband chocolate bars, cereal boxes, and drone-delivered drugs as he plots to unpick the prison’s existing power structures. As the older alphas pass their time on outdated PlayStation 3 consoles, Dee represents a new age with the detachable controllers of his Nintendo Switch. 

When not engaging in power politics, Dee comes across as a helpful aide to Taylor, bribing him with pills, an air-fryer (no more stews brewed in a water kettle) and even a phone to connect with his estranged son. 

Wasteman is a prison film for the social media generation

That father-son bonding plays out via TikTok and stealthy videocalls, making Wasteman a prison film for the social media generation. Shakycam cell brawls and balaclava-masked drill raps are captured in blurry Insta-style screens whenever the prisoners can hide their phones from the hardly hawkeyed guards. But the vertical screen is also used to capture some gut-wrenching antics: one inmate is stuffed into a washing machine; another a TV slammed onto his head. 

That bare-knuckle realism is when Dee shows his true colours. Bummed by the meekness of his goody two shoes roommate, Blyth’s muscular inmate turns into a manipulator hellbent on ruining Taylor’s chance of freedom. What follows is an unnerving anti-buddy film injected with a frantic drum ’n’ bass soundtrack and some Safdies-style paranoia. 

Jonsson finds a hundred more empathy-inducing expressions, continuing his winning streak from Alien: Romulus and The Long Walk. As for his fellow rising star, Blyth chews up the scenery with chest-thumping machismo. In a manosphere dominated by Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson, Dee’s rage and manspreading energy feels all the more frightening and relevant.

Even if it doesn’t fully probe the socio-political realities of the prison experience, Wasteman succeeds as an emotional survival tale. Here’s a film that proves that sometimes, the most terrifying part of prison can just be who you’re locked up with. 

In UK and Ireland cinemas Feb 20.