Control is a tedious, repetitive, unoriginal slog of a single location film that, when it’s not reminding you of better restrained films, reminds me how tired I am Covid-influenced films. It’s not like Covid invented the the single location low-budget thriller… but it sure didn’t help.

Control is about a woman who makes up without her memory in a mysterious room. A voice tells her to break a pencil… then to repeat the experiment with more and more constraints. Soon she realizes she has psychic powers. And her memory is returning.

The leader actress is, I’m sad to say, just not that good at her job. In individual moments of stress, she’s fine… but when asked to perform anger or “I’m psychically going to murder you” looks, she just can’t pull it off convincingly.

A second character is eventually introduced and we get a rather bland two-person play that just feels like its stretching the premise to get to that magic ninety minute mark. He’s fine as an actor, but they just don’t have an interesting scripts to fill the time.

Eventually the psychic powers turn aggressive… and the movie continues to plod along. I’m sure its slow-burn is intentional, but there’s not enough interesting or unique things going on to justify it. When you want it to get chaotic and crazy, it refuses and continues to amble.

Nothing much to recommend this tiresome, overly familiar movie. It doesn’t do anything unique or interesting. Skip.

Score: 58