"Await Further Instructions": Await Further Beefcake

The Netflix movie Await Further Instructions (2018) stars cleancut, extremely buffed young Nick (Sam Gittins), who brings his new girlfriend Annji (Neerja Naik) home to meet the folks at Christmastime.  Which of us hasn't had to face that mixture of awkwardness and suspicion?

It's especially awkward when the new "friend"is not what the family expected: someone of the same sex or another race.  Annji isn't white, and the working-class Eastender family isn't exactly woke:  mousy "have a cuppa" Mom (Abigal Cruttenden), bullying, judgmental dad (Grant Masters, left), and "build the wall" Brexit-loving, Jesus-quoting Grandad (David Bradley).

I can relate.  I've brought guys home before.

Um...knowing that the folks were blathering monsters, why did  Nick invite Annji to stay with them? Maybe a dinner in a nice public restaurant would be a better idea.

Filling out the family-from-hell are Nick's very pregnant sister Kate (Holly Weston) and her boorish,  dumb-jock husband Scott (Kris Saddler), who don't really understand what's going on.

You may have noticed that three of the four male cast members are rather buffed, and they do grace us with some shirtless scenes.  Not many, but enough to keep you watching.

The gay symbolism and beefcake explosion made me wonder about the sexual orientation of the director, Johnny "The Revolution" Kevorkian.  

His previous works were self-written, directed, and produced shorts involve a missing brother, a kidnapped wife, "seizures," and a "wake," with hunks in starring roles.

Back to the inane plot: after a few run-ins with the folks, Annji can't take it anymore, and insists that they leave in the middle of the night.  But the entire house is covered by a strange impenetrable mesh.  They're trapped.  Cell phones and the internet are down, but the tv still works: one station, giving directions: "Stay inside and await further instructions."

As the family speculates about what happened -- a terrorist attack?  A ecological disaster?  further instructions appear on the screen.  They are told to inject each other with weird syringes that fall from the chimney, to quarantine one of them, and so on.  They squabble, take sides, get into physical altercations, and the instructions become more and more bizarre.  

Then coaxial cable tentacles start slithering out of the wall and killing them.  They try to fight, but everyone is killed except for Terry's newborn baby, who the tv monster apparently plans to raise: "Hello, Ruby," it writes on the tv screen.  "Worship me."

Um...the baby can't read....

The closing shot reveals that other houses in the neighborhood are also trapped by the cable meshes, so no doubt the tv monsters have taken over the world.  Or at least every house with cable tv.

Um...a parable on our obsession with tv?  This isn't 1973! Why not cell phones, or social media, or something from this century?

And if the tv monsters just wanted to kill all the humans except for a select few, why did they bother with the psychological manipulation?

And...and...and...well, the plot makes no sense, and everyone dies.  Here's another picture of Sam Gittins.

See also: Johnny Kevorkian