Film / Await Further Instructions

Saturation media just got a whole new meaning.

An independent British horror film from 2018, this movie takes the classic British Christmas plot, mixes it generously with National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, sticks the result in a blender and turns it on high.

Directed by Johnny Kevorkian, it's a typical working-class Christmas dinner in the Milgram household in a nameless suburb in the UK. All the typical family dysfunction is on display: The bigoted grandfather, the harried father, the dutiful mother. His young adult son Nick is returning home after a long absence with his EMT girlfriend Annji. But just as things begin to heat up, an ominous clanking sound is heard outside. Opening the front door, their teenaged son finds a dark, black membrane, impenetrable and cabled, with a breathing-pipe sticking out of the bottom. As soon as he makes this discovery, the family TV goes blank save for green teletype letters:

STAY INDOORS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

As the family argues exactly what the import of those instructions are - nuclear war? pandemic? - the instructions abruptly change, and a series of ever-more sinister messages appears. Things begin to escalate out of control while Nick tries to decipher what these messages really mean before they are all dead, but could any cryptic hijacking be worse than being stuck inside with your family for the holidays?

---

Await Further Instructions provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Tony is this to Nick, primarily because of Nick's refusal to blindly obey the instructions on the TV. Granddad, however, is far worse, being an unapologetic asshole to everyone (particularly Annji) including his own son, who he only ever refers to by his Embarrassing Nickname. Granddad also attributes Nick's willfulness to Tony not having beaten him as a child.
• Accidental Misnaming: Tony believes Annji is short for Angela, not Annjeera.
• Adults Are Useless: An extreme example. Nick, the younger son, does most of the detective work and remains calm even as the adults are falling to pieces around him, with Tony in particular vanishing off to his study to "work" after Kate fell from the second floor and broke her leg. It's no coincidence that he gets the first look outside the membrane - and sees the alien Puppeteer Parasite crawling over the side of the house.
• Afraid of Needles: When they get the unsterile "vaccination kit" through the chimney along with instructions to use it (on the TV, natch), most of the family is understandably squicked - save for Tony, who takes his dosage immediately. Once Annji figures out how to sterilize the needles, the grandfather is the first to take the plunge, calling the rest of them sissies. He vomits a tarry substance not long after and dies.
• An Aesop: Don't blindly follow orders from an unknown source, and don't be afraid to admit you were wrong and someone else had a better read on things. Subverted in that being right about the instructions' malevolence doesn't save Nick and Annji in the end, as by then its power is too great.
• Apocalypse How: At the least a Class 2 with The alien parasite shown to have taken over the entire suburb.
• Asshole Victim: The grandfather is the first to die when he becomes "infected" by the alien. The father most definitely also qualifies when the Puppeteer Parasite takes him over.
  • The sister, dying while egging on Scott to beat the crap out of Nick for "not doing as he's told" gets bumped and knocked over the banister as she followed the fight upstairs.
• Ax-Crazy: The father after he finally snaps, grabbing an axe and starting to kill people with it. Telegraphed pretty early on, too.
• Babies Ever After: A horribly bleak example. Most of the family is dead, the baby is birthed by the parasite and immediately taken over, as evidenced by her Black Eyes of Evil.
  Alien parasite:HELLO RUBY. WORSHIP ME.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Tony, after an argument with Nick, admits that he can be hard on others, including his own family, due to his own exacting standards. When Nick apologizes for his part in their argument, Tony acts surprised.
  Tony: Well I didn't say I was sorry. Everything I have done has been to help this family.
• Blind Obedience: The Movie - but particularly Tony, who views any dissent as treasonous.
• Body Horror: The film is loaded with this especially after the Puppeteer Parasite reveals itself and begins attacking the family.
• The Chain of Harm: The father is very abusive towards Nick, and is later revealed to have been horrifically abused by the grandfather himself. Nick tries to reach out to him over it, but is shut down.
• Chekhov's Gun: Kate's reluctance to take the vaccine was over concerns for her unborn child. The baby is the only survivor, and it's clear that she's been infected by the alien parasite - likely due to the aforementioned "vaccine".
• The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Clearly a mentality of the family, who lash out at Nick and Annji for their perfectly reasonable objections and questions about the mysterious messages and following the orders. Averted plot-wise, as Nick and Annji are entirely right that something was very wrong.
• Control Freak: Tony, the patriarch, shows this in spades during the course of the movie.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Initially it looks like Nick might have figured things out standing up to the parasite and noting that it needs them to worship it, and things seem to die down. Then it kills him and Annji, revealing that with baby Ruby as someone it can raise to only know worshiping it, it actually doesn't need them.
• Dark Messiah: What the alien parasite sees itself as, as the TV's messages late in the movie start turning messianic.
  I AM YOUR SALVATION.
• Deadly Gas: Toward the end, a loud alarm begins to sound with a Spreading Disaster Map Graphic, extolling the survivors to return to the lower floor - a black gas has begun pumping into the breathing pipes on the upper floor, filling one room at a time. The mother does not make it, but Scott helps Nick save Annji.
• The Dog Bites Back: Two instances.
  • First, after Granddad had mouthed off to his son yet again, Tony growlingly tells him to never undermine his authority in front of the others again, as Granddad is no longer the family's patriarch.
  • Second, Beth - the mother - slaps Tony after Kate dies, telling him off for never listening to anyone else.
• Downer Ending: The last shot of the movie shows Every house in the area is overrun by the black alien parasites, and every house either has glowing instructions on their TV screens, or is ablaze.
• Dwindling Party: The mysterious force isolates the members of the family most likely to figure out its secrets one by one. Then they start dropping like flies to accident or attack.
• Dysfunctional Family: Starts out as a black-humor Dom Com before veering hard into horror territory. The Dysfunction is exploited by the mysterious force, who plays on racism towards Annji and familial dislike of Nick to isolate them, as the main dissenters.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The grandfather reveals the father's very early on: Squelcher. It's because he wet the bed once as a child, for which he was beaten black and blue.
• Fingore:After the "vaccination kit" is returned through an access slot, Scott, the daughter's husband, tries to keep it open to yell for help. Three fingers are promptly chopped off by the parasite.
• A God Am I: The force seems to have a God complex, given that it demands humans worship it.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Scott, Kate's husband, is remarkably weak-willed, swapping from siding with Nick to siding with Tony with comparatively minor provocation, though typically centered around his wife's well-being.
• Hope Spot: See Cruel Twist Ending above.
• A House Divided: As Nick puts it towards the climax, "We've done this to ourselves."
• Idiot Ball: All the adults take turns throwing it around after the house is sealed up - even when the TV's instructions turn sinister. Some of this is due to severe Never My Fault issues held by family members.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: The rest of the family (except Beth) seems to have this towards Nick, claiming he thinks he's "better" than them when they're really the ones in the right and that he needs to learn to do as he's told when they tell him things.
  • Special mention goes to Tony, whose physical and emotional abuse while growing up under Granddad caused him to have exacting standards and a deep sense of self-loathing.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Done near the end as Tony believes the TV's statement that Nick is a Deep Cover Agent and that Annji had turned him, to the point that he almost removes an eye before his wife screams from downstairs.
• Just Following Orders: The father takes this view, even as the TV's instructions veer from helpful to sinister to outright murderous.
• Knight Templar: Tony dogmatically believes that his actions are for the greater good. It gets to a literal degree when he becomes convinced that the TV instructions are messages from God.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Kate, as shown by her claiming "tumult" is either a made-up or Indian word, and telling Annji off for even daring to try correcting Granddad's overt racism. She, in turn, thinks Nick is one, as he "always has to be right" - nevermind the fact that he generally is.
• Mechanical Abomination: The Big Bad of the movie is this.
• Never My Fault: Revealed to be a problem in the family, shown with both the father and the sister. They refuse to admit that following the orders was a bad idea, so the dissenter must be the one in the wrong.
  • Tony is by far the worst offender, as he mentions that Beth talked to him about being so stern, prompting Nick to say "I'm sorry too". Tony quickly points out that he wasn't apologizing for it, just making a point of fact.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Zigzagged. Initially it looks like the force can't do much but give orders, with the family's slavish following of those orders causing most of the issues. Then it gasses the top floor, and later outright starts shooting tentacles into the house to directly kill people. While it prefers manipulation, it's not the only thing it has.
• Oh, Crap!: The movies acts are punctuated by these moments - the first, when Nick discovers they are all sealed in the house by the black membrane. The second with he manages to capture video of the alien parasite, the third when poison gas starts seeping into the upper floor, and the final one when the parasite reveals it can see and hear everything in the house and begins attacking them directly.
• Ominous Television: The alien parasite is able to communicate to the characters through progressively sinister TV broadcasts.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Played for Drama, as we learn that Tony's nickname of "Squelcher" was the result of his having wet the bed once when he was a child, because he was afraid of what Granddad would do to him if he went to the toilet after curfew. He was still beaten black and blue for wetting the bed, with Granddad telling him that "Real men can hold it."
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: After Granddad's death, Tony seems to deliver one of these to Granddad over the abuse he'd suffered at his hands growing up... only to turn it around on Nick at the last moment, saying that he knows nothing about being a father and making the hard choices, unlike himself and Granddad.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Granddad is this Played for Drama, as he flatly calls Aanji a cunt at the dinner table, and replies with a snide "Nah" when Nick demands he apologize.
• Sinister Surveillance: It becomes quite obvious to the family early on that someone is watching them through the membrane, and the instructions on the TV are changing to reflect conditions inside. The alien first reveals itself to Scott with a one-second message on the main TV, then later to Annji on the bedroom television: I SEE YOU.
• Slasher Film: The film veers hard into this territory when an axe gets introduced and the father, following the TV's instructions, starts killing people with it.
• The Reveal: Nick finally gets a camera past the outer black membrane, and sees what looks like a bunch of black cables strung over the home. Then they start wriggling and abruptly attack the phone, which comes back splattered in tarry goop.
• Trailers Always Spoil: One of the movie posters actually spoiled the fact that the membrane and the messages on the TV are all the work of an alien parasite conducting experiments on the human population.
• Trash the Set: Nick shows no compunction about punching holes in the wall, but the set doesn't really get trashed until the alien breaks in and starts shredding the house around the survivors.
• The Unfavorite: Nick, made clear long before things go to hell. He and Annji outright planned to leave first thing in the morning due to the rude reception he faced and the racism she faced. This increases throughout the film, as the duo often end up bullied by the rest of the family and blamed for not blindly listening for the TV.
• Unwitting Test Subject: The entire family is the subject of this, which Nick figures out early. That it is an alien parasite doing the testing is not revealed until much later.
• You Know I'm Black, Right?: Kate pulls this shortly after meeting Annji, as she complains about "foreign cover doctors" before catching herself - Annji is willing to let her off the hook.
• Your Head Asplode: Happens to the mother after she is trapped in the bathroom, the black gas filling the room. She gets a good lungful of it and promptly explodes.