Director: Cal McMau
Writers: Hunter Andrews, Eoin Doran
Stars: David Jonsson, Tom Blyth, Alex Hassell
Synopsis: Parolee Taylor’s hopes for a fresh start are jeopardized by cellmate Dee’s arrival. As Dee takes Taylor under his wing, a vicious attack tests their bond, forcing Taylor to choose between protecting Dee and his own chances at freedom.
Charles Williams’ Inside, an intensely thoughtful Australian prison drama one of the first half of the year’s strongest films, was quietly released in theaters at the tail end of June, most critics and audiences aptly observed its thorough examination of interiority, especially the double-edged sword that idea maintains inside a correctional facility. There’s the interiority of the institution itself, and the complexities of its inmates, those that complicate their relationships with one another and their connection – or lack thereof – to the outside world. Featuring standout turns from Guy Pearce, Cosmo Jarvis, and the film’s astonishing breakout teenaged lead, Vincent Miller, one never questions whether or not Williams researched, scrupulously cast, and hand-assembled the film’s world his debut unfolds within, and not least because he both shot on location in the Malmsbury Youth Justice and Western Plains Correctional Centres, but because he involved former inmates in its production. “I want you guys involved,” he told them. “I want you to feel that the years you wasted in this fucking place, like you got something out of it, you got to contribute something.”
Inside feels so imbued with the expertise of those who have lived stories similar to the one its cast and crew are telling – a quality that the Oscar-nominated Sing Sing similarly possessed – that it’s astonishing to contemplate the idea of any prison-set film not taking an identical approach in its process, regardless of the length of its director’s CV. And at first blush, Cal McMau’s debut feature, Wasteman, feels too savage to comprehend. It’s not that Inside, or Sing Sing, or any number of films sharing its semi-niche genre) lack death (though the former is significantly more violent than the latter), but that they don’t feature violence as an incorporeal character. To that extent, McMau’s film makes the savagery depicted in its compatriots look like episodes of “Sesame Street,” though not in a manner that makes its substance fall away as its characters repeatedly beat one another to a pulp and dice their adversaries like onions with homemade shivs.
That depth is initially only present in Taylor, a character that a lesser filmmaker – and far lesser actor than David Jonsson, whose chameleonic ability to portray raw emotion is more evolved than most performers many decades his senior in age and experience – would render as a sniveling vessel colloquially referred to as the cell block “bitch,” and deservingly so. Not only is he the least physically imposing of all this British brig’s blokes, but the film takes its title from the total brokenness he retains like a cartoon storm cloud hovering above his head. Common British slang delivered with the same vitriol as the “YOU SEE YOU, YEAHs” these imprisoned tossers throw around like a tennis ball, a “wasteman” is considered a useless vessel, a waste of space that can be treated like a rag doll without retaliation. When we first encounter Taylor, Jonsson’s sagged shoulders and furrowed brow precisely suggest a man who has been beaten to smithereens by life and those around him that he hardly believes his existence is worthwhile. An addiction to pills that his block’s top boys (Alex Hassell and Corin Silva, stellar as bruising brutes) supply in exchange for haircuts doesn’t help matters, to the point where the news that Taylor is up for early parole thanks to his good (read: invisible) behavior is a terrifying concept. His space in prison may make him primed for the scrap heap inside, but could what awaits on the outs be worse?
Enter Dee, a towering, smug, abrasive convict embodied in a career-best performance from Tom Blyth, Taylor’s new cellmate and worst nightmare. From the moment he enters their quarters, the room for two becomes Dee’s room, as he hangs nude photos on the wall, swaps out his new roomie’s television for a flatscreen equipped with a Nintendo Switch, and stacks his tracksuits and high-tops along the ground, a collection only outdone by his well-displayed stash of sports drinks, supplements, and protein bars. Apart from being Hasan Piker’s wet dream, Dee is also quickly established as the new man of the House, dominating the attentions that used to be reserved for Hassell and Silva’s efficient internal drug ring and hosting many of his fellow inmates for ragers clouded by joints, soaked with alcohol, and snowy with ground-up pills and coke. It’s only a matter of time before Taylor becomes entranced with Dee’s allure and corrupt dealings, a relationship that threatens his sanity in addition to his life and future.
Admittedly, these stylistic trappings initially seem absurd, like intentionally extravagant elements added to an incarcerated gang narrative to make its world feel overly recognizable to those uninitiated with the inside, but McMau and Wasteman’s production team not only worked closely with a charity that supports men newly freed from being behind bars, but viewed not exoticizing matters as “their North Star.” As Blyth put it to Variety, “It’s going to be exciting, it’s going to be violent. The director added, “We’d constantly be like: is this legit? Does it feel legit? And they’d be like, it is scarily legit, it feels a little bit too real,” added McMau. To further its truth, Wasteman cinematographer Lorenzo Levrini (who shot the 2023 gem Amanda) and McMau took inspiration from secret cell phone footage that has been uploaded from inside, videos that often feature incessant partying — the film’s soundtrack and score are stellar, featuring original music by Matthew Barnes and a perfect Young Fathers needle-drop, to name one among the many — along with violence, threats, and drug use run rampant. The guard force is understaffed and overworked, quite literally affording the inmates the opportunity to run the asylum.
The more McMau and Wasteman writers Hunter Andrews and Eoin Doran reveal the intricacies of their film’s world, the more convincing and harrowing its brutality. Similarly, more opportunities are afforded for its co-leads to suffuse Taylor and Dee with a seasoned combination of boiling fury and a lack of acceptance for their own selfhoods, which have both been stripped bare by the justice system and depressed within their spirits due to their prior misdeeds. Jonsson is rapidly becoming one of Hollywood’s most reliable performers — to say nothing of his thespian genius alone, a gift to every project he graces with his endless abilities — and his work here toggles between tortured and vengeful, the latter quality enjoying an extended aging process before its calculated explosion. That Blyth takes the crown as the film’s best player will be unfairly chalked up to him having a much showier part, but when you consider the preliminary timidness of his Plainclothes character and the fermenting hatred he eventually possessed in his layered breakout performance as a young Cornelius Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, it’s easy (if still alarming) to see the pure villainy he serves up in Wasteman. Timothée Chalamet and Paul Mescal are strong actors, but room should be made in mainstream conversation for two talents as burgeoning as Jonsson and Blyth’s.
Then again, there’s something altogether more exhilarating to see two of today’s most gifted up-and-comers in a film far more curious, grueling, and assured than a great many projects their fellows attach their names to. (Jonsson also serves as an executive producer here.) That it might be dubbed a picture on the “small” side — a tired label that tends to unfairly limit a film’s impact before it even takes off — matters not when the talent involved is so gifted, its filmmaking team foremost among that group. McMau, a seasoned commercial, music video, and short film director, proves his abilities as a stylist expand far beyond tinier screens long before the credits roll, forming his own distinct and visceral visual language that serves as a beautiful accompaniment to Andrews and Doran’s pedal-to-the-metal script. That relentless pursuit of the thrill doesn’t always pan out, especially in ambitious first features, but Wasteman feels like the exception to most rules, as if breaking them on principal runs in its blood. More films should be willing to take such harrowing risks, but few will result in achievements as bold and brilliant as this. Perhaps they’d be best not to try.
Wasteman premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
