Wasteman (2026) – Chiswick Cinema film reviews

David Jonsson as Taylor, Tom Blyth as Dee. Image credit: IMDB

Wasteman

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In his feature debut, director Cal McMau comes out swinging with a violent, uncompromising prison drama that, if you can stomach it, is richly rewarding.

Arriving with plenty of pedigree when it comes to anxiety inducing cinema, Wasteman was originally intended to be directed by the Safdie Brothers (Good Time, Uncut Gems), and is produced by Boiling Point director Phillip Barantini.

If you are familiar with Barantini’s Boiling Point, you will recognise his signature preoccupation with high pressure environments, and his influence here ensures the 90 minute runtime is coated in a layer of permanent anxiety. Every decision feels like it’s being made under duress, every action seems likely of leading to a terrible consequence, and there is little in the way of light relief.

Taylor (David Jonsson) has spent thirteen years inside and is weeks away from parole when a new cellmate, Dee (Tom Blyth), arrives and starts pulling at every thread that drug-addicted and docile Taylor has been struggling to keep intact.

McMau and his writers, Hunter Andrews and Eoin Doran, don’t overload the premise with backstory or distraction. The film was shot over 18 days in the real, decommissioned corridors of Shepton Mallet Prison, and the environment feels oppressive in the way only a building that was actually designed to be oppressive can be, there’s no dressing it up.

What McMau handles well is the texture of the people inside it. Even the most volatile, dangerous inmates are given just enough humanity to avoid becoming props.  Nobody here is purely functional to the plot, there are flashes of something recognisable in even the most threatening corners of the wing, and it’s that quality that stops the film from feeling like a simple exercise in grimness.

It takes its characters seriously, and when no one feels like caricature, the anxiety and threat feel all the more real as a result.

As Taylor, Jonsson is exceptional. He has one of those remarkably expressive faces that can communicate every ounce of anxiety, pain, or fleeting, desperate moment of hope with stunning clarity.  He carries the weight of the film effortlessly, but his performance never feels showy. He stays perfectly in sync with the brutal, grounded reality of the prison setting.  It’s measured, but often devastating, work.

Tom Blyth, who earlier this year starred in the Netflix romcom hit People We Meet on Vacation – about as polar opposite a performance and role to Wasteman as you could possibly imagine – brings an unpredictability and menace to Dee.

There’s a looseness to him that keeps you permanently on edge, fleeting moments of warmth and tenderness accompany his predominant loud, charismatic malice. Where Jonsson is all restraint and internalised tension, Blyth is volatile, magnetic, and dangerously easy to like, which is exactly what makes Dee so unsettling.

It is a testament to both actors that they click so effectively, as the film’s success relies almost entirely on this central friction. Without that spark, the script’s well designed tension would likely fall flat, but instead remains compelling throughout.

At 90 minutes, not a single piece of character detail or line of dialogue feels like excess. Throughout the film, the build up of dread is consistently precise and deliberate. Everything accumulates with purpose, pulling towards an excruciatingly tense conclusion, and it’s this restraint that makes what follows land all the harder.

When the violence does come, and it does, it’s explosive and visceral, and entirely earned by everything that preceded it.

Wasteman is a lean, impressive directorial debut with exhilarating central performances from two actors on the rise, suggesting the future of British cinema is in safe hands.

Wasteman is showing till March 12 at The Chiswick Cinema, book tickets here: Wasteman

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