It is a strange siege of a sixteen-year-old Vivian at the Vistalas Academy, a place somewhat like prison. Perhaps it is surprising that Vivian is reunited with Sofia, the former friend who betrayed her. It seems that girls still do not know why they are trapped, and they begin a serious search to uncover the terrible truth behind their imprisonment. Both girls are trying to find a way out of this strange predicament.
Drawing on the disturbing hermetic worlds of Innocence, Never Let Me Go and The Handmaid's Tale, Level 16 places us in a supposedly educational environment that is rearing meek, docile illiterates for a purpose that will only gradually become clear.
Level 16 is an engaging, earnest and thrilling feminist fairy tale that both consciously riffs on earlier films and yet maintains an original vision without becoming clichéd or predictable.
the big reveal undermines Esterhazy's carefully laid and creepy setup, a case of meticulous years long planning turning out to be utterly unnecessary to its end goal, if more dramatically interesting.
Level 16 is a sharp little sci-fi thriller that does dystopia right, and like all the best bleak visions of a future world, it offers commentary worth sinking your teeth into.
But as it sputters toward its curtain-exposing conclusion, "Level 16" stays disappointingly thin, both as a dark-future cautionary saga and a genre exercise.
