Review: Equals

In Drake Doremus' Equals, the future is envisioned as a dystopia where feelings are suppressed and emotions are dangerous to both the individual and the collective. Like Gattaca, the populace functions as a carefully monitored group. Like The Island, everyone is garbed in white, all the better to emphasise the sterile homogeny of this particular society. And as with so many films of its ilk, love will threaten the new world order.

Silas (Nicholas Hoult) is one such drone living in a time where the common cold and cancer have been eradicated and war is a concept to be found in the historical records. He works as an illustrator for a science journal that researches and documents the past world. His days, like so many others, consists of getting up, going to work, and coming back home only to start the cycle all over again. The monotony is soon interrupted by reports of an outbreak of Switched On Syndrome (SOS), an incurable condition in which problem genes awaken, leading to unpredictable sensory experiences and behavioural defects. On the way home from work, he encounters a couple being escorted by guards - later, the news reports that they were subdued for engaging in physical activity (coupling is forbidden) and sent to the DEN (Defective Emotional Neuropathy), a facility for containment and emotional suppression treatment. The news encourages everyone to report anyone that displays even the merest hint of SOS.

When a jumper falls to his death outside his workplace, he notices one of his colleagues, Nia (Kristen Stewart), bite her lip, dig her nails into her palms, and fight back tears. Soon he himself begins experiencing odd feelings and is concerned when he's diagnosed with Stage 1 SOS and prescribed with inhibitors so that he can maintain a normal and productive life. Yet something has awakened in him and he finds himself taken with Nia, whom he suspects of hiding her SOS. She initially maintains her distance but the two eventually yield to their longing, conducting surreptitious meetings in the lavatory and hoping they're not found out for the punishment for their love would surely be death.

As the lovers, Stewart and Hoult make for a fine pairing. Slowly intoxicated by the sensations of a caress or a kiss, most of their clandestine encounters are sensually shot in that neon-lit bathroom, the scene further pulsed by the choral-infused electronica composed by Dustin O'Halloran and Sascha Ring. Hoult and Stewart truly make the film, his sculptural face flickering alive with emotion, hers deprived of its usual skittish sullenness and suffused with rawness and subtlety.

Despite their excellent efforts, there's no overlooking that Equals quickly evolves into a dull and predictable affair. Doremus lets down his leads with dialogue that wouldn't feel out of place in a dime store novel. The world that Doremus creates is half-formed and the allegory he introduces remains adrift despite the writer-director's overall lack of subtext. Compare this with the finely detailed portrait painted by Yorgos Lanthimos in the similarly-themed but far more brilliant The Lobster to fully sense the triteness and unoriginality that infects Equals.

Equals

Directed by: Drake Doremus

Written by: Drake Doremus

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Nicholas Hoult, Guy Pearce, Jacki Weaver, Toby Huss, David Selby, Bel Powley, Kate Lyn Sheil