Remember the thesis of the hit documentary The Corporation (2003) – that if the modern corporation was analysed according to principles of human behaviour, its profile would be that of a psychopath? Exam takes that idea to its most frightening conclusion, replacing the hidden psycho-puppetmaster of the Saw franchise with a big business empire that uses brutal techniques to identify appropriately unfeeling new employees. The directorial debut of the hot-in-Hollywood British screenwriter Stuart Hazeldine (who worked on Alex Proyas’ recent hit Knowing and the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still), and based upon a story by Simon Garrity, Exam is a clever psychological thriller with a dark puzzle at its heart. In a dystopian near-future, a group of candidates gather to undertake an examination which offers them the hope of a life-changing job with a shady top-flight multinational company. An invigilator instructs them to answer one simple question, with the caveat that spoiling their papers, talking to the armed guard at the door or leaving the room will prompt instant disqualification. The invigilator leaves the room; the candidates turn over their papers; the sheet is completely blank. So, where or what is the question…? As the members of the group struggle to determine just how they’re meant to prove themselves, it becomes apparent that the job for which they’re competing is not just a job: it’s a rare means of escape from an outside world that is being decimated by a contagious virus. Everyone, therefore, is prepared to give up a little more than the average interviewee – and as tensions erupt amid the group, the stakes they’re playing for get ever higher. Deft in its depiction of a particular breed of ambitious go-getter whose compassion has been battered down by sheer force of will, and confident in its maintenance of a tense race-against-time structure, Exam is an impressively nasty piece of work, and a fresh interpretation of genre conventions. Hazeldine’s next project may require a slightly grander visual scale than this film: he’s working on the script for a planned Hollywood adaptation of Paradise Lost. No wonder he’s intrigued by competitive instincts and grand ambitions…