The Mill
Lil Rel Howery, who broke into big-screen acting as the comic relief in “Get Out” and has been expanding his on-screen prowess since, spends a good chunk of “The Mill” pushing a heavy stone in a small circle. That’s the main tension for this lackluster horror experiment from director Sean King O’Grady, which has Howery trying his hand at existential horror and leading a (mostly) one-man show. Also serving as a producer, it’s Howery’s take on cog-in-the-machine projects like “Severance” and “Squid Game,” though the promise stops right about there.
Pushing this ancient grist mill is just another day of labor for Howery’s broken, beaten-down Joe, who wakes up inside an open-air prison of three concrete walls. The mill is in the middle, and he must subsist only on cafeteria food that’s dumped through a little slot: wrapped-up sandwiches, a bottle of water, and chips. He’s thrown into this mysterious setting, still wearing the suit he has donned for ten loyal years. The company that Joe works for, the omnipotent, Amazon-like Mallard, is his faceless master who only presents themselves with a cheery voice. They play their commercials for him when not playing through Kubrick-beloved classical cuts, hinting at a cold, fascistic rigidity. Each night, Mallard kills one of his co-workers for underperforming.
The script by Jeffrey David Thomas clearly comes from an angry place about dehumanizing workforce mentalities, including companies that thrive on the hard labor of people who are only numbers to their wealthy masters. In the minds of the powerful few, loyalty from the interchangeable is hardly different from submission. To paraphrase how Roy Wood Jr. (quoting Doug Herzog) just left his job at “The Daily Show” last week, “You don’t own these jobs. You rent them … No matter how long you’re there, you’re just passing through.” These ideas of anonymity and manipulation within Thomas’ script are dulled by their obvious referencing here, and by horror cinematography that’s just too underlit to be effective.
Initially, Joe tries to do a good job and to be an overachiever. But while this earns him a gift—a pen with his name engraved—it also makes for a problem for the others to match. “The Mill” grows from an existential problem of having no exit to untangling worker psychology, presenting it in such a dystopian setting. When Joe needs motivation to reach his quota (initially 50 minimum full circles throughout his 16-hour demanded work day), he has flashbacks to his wife and the baby she’ll soon give birth to.
