Deadline

As final exam approach, a shocking “suicide notice” appeared in Enshan high school. It accuses the exam system of crushing students and threatens suicide on the exam day. The school is afraid of triggering more anxiety among students, and worried about its reputation. At the same time, they urgently try to identify the person. As the truth slowly unravels, it turned out to be a scandal in the education system.

In a Taiwan where the entire nationwide education system is gearing up for the examinations that will affect the lives of thousands of students, those at a prestigious school are nervously awaiting their big day. Upon this day their futures may depend - and those of many of their families, and so they are under a considerable amount of pressure which is brought rather potently to the attention of the staff when leaflets float down from the roof with one week to go. They state, clearly, that this cannot go on and that unless some fairly profound changes are made to the system one of their number is going to take their own life. The school principal (Anthony Chau-Sang Wong) comes across as a rather authoritarian figure and is determined that his school will not be derailed in it's preparations. Pupils "Peiching" (Ya-Chih Tai); "Ruoyan" (Mimi Shao) and the ADHD-suffering "Heng" (a powerful effort from Run-yin Bai) may well prove, for entirely different reasons, to be flies in that ointment while teachers "Gao" (Huang Diyang) and "Miss Tien" (Allison Lin) also have their own skin in a game that raises several quite pivotal questions about the future automation of education and of the demands made on people ill-equipped, both intellectually and emotionally, for the strains put on them by this ultra-competitive process. There is something of the "Metropolis" (1917) to this as we see children of all ages, clad in identical uniforms with military-style age insignia, marching like robots through a concrete, multi-tiered, establishment that cares little for individuality. Those that teach may wish it were different but as one student points out when threatened with detention, the pressures on the staff to deliver perfect students is just as oppressive as that placed on the young and so perhaps naturally many are turning to artificial enhancements. What's more interesting about the concept here is that this form of "cheating" is neither illegal not considered particularly immoral by many teachers and parents alike - all that counts is success. That's really the thrust here and it's the younger actors who deliver the more strongly as even the seemingly more perfect struggle with the tasks in hand and their associated expectations. Could we really get to a situation where an "iSmart" system could be used to evaluate and assess our children on an entirely arbitary basis and grade them for life according to those limited criteria? Of course, the narrative is highly speculative but unlike so many horror movies coming out of the likes of Blum House these days, this does actually present us with something as dehumanising and horrific as anything from any demonic world could hope to be and though it does exaggerate, it is still quite scary.