Film Review: Double Blind is a relentless, claustrophobic thriller

Double Blind.

• Double Blind
• ★★★☆☆
• Cinema release

An experimental drug trial provides the backdrop to Double Blind (16s), an Irish psychological thriller that kicks into high gear when the trial participants — among them Claire (Millie Brady), Amir (Akshay Kumar), Alison (Abby Fitz) and Ray (Diarmuid Noyes) — realise that one of the new drug’s side effects means that if they sleep, they die. 

Trapped inside an underground facility for 24 hours, the handful of human guinea pigs quickly start to experience the horrors of sleep deprivation, which include paranoia, hallucinations and homicidal meltdown.

Written by Darach McGarrigle and directed by Ian Hunt-Duffy, Double Blind is a claustrophobic thriller that is relentless in cranking up the tension.

The quality of the acting is uneven at times, and the script occasionally veers into the realms of the improbable. 

However, Millie Brady, Akshay Kumar and Pollyanna McIntosh, playing the doctor who loses control of her experiment, are all impressive.

(cinema release)