'The Mill' review: Sharp workplace satire is suspenseful, thoughtful

WHAT IT'S ABOUT In "The Mill," an everyday employee of the Mallard Corporation, an Amazon-like behemoth, awakens one day alone in a nondescript courtyard prison, with no memory of how he got there and no understanding of why. There's nothing but big cement walls and, in the middle of the floor, the giant stone wheel of a mill.

After the initial disorientation, Joe (Lil Rel Howery, "Get Out") learns from an ominous virtual assistant that the corporation has trapped him and other employees in their own versions of this solitary hell with a singular daily task. 

Push the mill wheel in a complete circle at least 50 times per day, every day, between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. You must compete with your colleagues. If you want any hope of living to see the next day — or your pregnant wife again, in Joe's case — don't finish with the fewest number of revolutions.

The movie is directed by Sean King O'Grady and scripted by Jeffrey David Thomas.

MY SAY "The Mill" generates ample suspense in the ways it reveals the truths of Joe's predicament. And it's equally as smart, establishing a compelling horror/sci-fi allegory built around corporate America's eternal search for ways to motivate its workers and inspire more productivity.

That makes it a genuine find in this streaming world — satisfying whatever algorithmic decision influenced its greenlighting, while also passing the eternal test of what makes a genre picture stand above the pack.

Joe faces a grim task, marked by backbreaking work, a modicum of food and just enough water to survive. Through relentless close-ups and an absolute minimum of distractions, the filmmakers immerse the audience in the ordeal. It's wrenching, it's difficult, and Howery plays it with a painstaking eye on the humanity of it all, progressing through stages of denial, panic, resolve and acceptance. 

Joe is worth caring about, because Howery puts us right there with him. And the journey through this miserable ordeal reveals a lot about his character and how he got here, even as we never learn more than a small amount of explicit backstory.

The narrative is unpredictable enough to sustain interest throughout; there's no way to really know where any of this is going.

But it's also a sharp workplace satire.

The challenge facing Joe and his colleagues amounts to the world's worst team-building exercise, sending them through what one character deems a "crucible of adversity." While Joe endlessly pushes that mill, the AI villain torments him with advertisements for Mallard's products.

The horror stems from the bland motivations that underpin the whole enterprise, the fanaticism that interplays with Mallard's mundane mission to get just a little bit more out of these employees, so that they might better do whatever nondescript job they do every day. 

Many viewers will recognize a lot more of what happens in "The Mill" than they might care to acknowledge. And that's why it works so well.

BOTTOM LINE It's first-rate genre filmmaking, suspenseful and thoughtful at the same time.