Evolution | Film review - Lucile Hadžihalilović's surreal island drama

(Image credit: © Metrodome Pictures)

Taking place on an isolated island inhabited only by woman and young boys, French director Lucile Hadžihalilović's surreal movie Evolution will get under your skin and into your head if you give it a chance.

Eerie and enigmatic, the film follows a 10-year-old boy as he slowly learns more about his mysterious surroundings and about his chilling destiny. The movie’s meaning is elusive. Is it about puberty, gender or, as the title suggests, evolution? Yet its images are startling. Some are very beautiful – particularly in a series of underwater sequences (the film was shot around Lanzarote). But when the action moves on to dry land, where the women appear to be conducting scientific experiments on the boys, things get altogether creepier.

Certificate 15. Runtime 82 mins. Director Lucile Hadžihalilović

Evolution shows today on Sky Select at 12.05am and is available on DVD from Metrodome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5cmrW-Ej84

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.