‘It’s really easy. All you have to do is fill out the worksheet and stay out of trouble’
BBFC: Rated 18 for very strong language, strong violence, drug misuse.
2025’s BAFTA Rising Star, David Jonsson and Tom Blyth, perhaps best known for his role as a young President Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, team up and kick off in equal measure in Wasteman, director Cal McMau’s new prison drama.
Having originally premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, this story of a turbulent bond between cellmates in a British prison has finally come home to roost.
We follow Taylor (Jonsson), who after thirteen years behind bars unexpectedly finds himself in with a chance of getting out on the condition that he keeps his nose clean for two final weeks inside. That would be a difficult prospect for any nervy serial user without the arrival of a fresh new cellmate (Blyth) with an intense energy to him and ambitions of running the place, or at least its underground drug dealing scene.
It’s an incredibly simple premise that threatens to fall into prison cliches, and though that issue does rear its head at times, it was refreshing to see writers Hunter Andrews and Eoin Doran create a dynamic between Taylor and Dee (Blyth’s character) than ran deeper than the more typical “good roomie; bad roomie” conflict. I expected it to be pretty predictably adversarial right from the word go, but the writers manage to spark a lot of sympathy for Dee, and their chemistry was enjoyable to watch develop.
The script actually finds ways to humanise most of its cast, even extending to Gaz, one half of the dealing double act that see Dee’s arrival as a threat to their monopoly on drugs in the prison, but
it’s not above falling prey to the tropes of the genre, too. While I was glad to see sexual threat not only wholly absent but actively critiqued (something even The Shawshank Redemption, the high watermark for any of these movies, felt the need to include), there are still beats and moments that feel as though they’re in there just to sell the maturity of the story and the “grittiness” of its setting, but instead felt like parts of lesser movies from the genre trying to seep in through the cracks in the concrete.
Wasteman is at its best when it lets the interplay between its characters take the reins in creating atmosphere rather than leaning into the bingo card of prison movie conventions (surely there are other ways to smuggle things behind bars, right?). Taylor and Dee’s push-and-pull relationship drive things forward nicely, with Taylor’s freedom (and a chance at reconnecting with his estranged son) just days away yet easily snatched back from him at the first sign of poor behaviour.
Tensions within the prison are shown to us through the clever integration of social media, with scenes of other prisoners’ violence filmed in portrait on phone cameras working in-universe to portray the ease with with information and rumours spreads through not only the prison but the world beyond it. When these tensions finally flare up, they bring intense scenes of violence crashing down on us with them.
It’s teeth-gritting, pulse-racing stuff that nicely punctuates each act or shift in the story and it shows that you don’t need to rely on the usual tools to show that your prison is a nasty place; just a tuna can and a dream.
Alex Hassell plays Paul, the darker of the two rival budding entrepreneurs in the prison. In a way, he and Gaz manage to come off as the shadowy foils to Taylor and Dee’s dynamic – one man brash and brutal; the other more measured – but despite the opening scene, which demonstrates Paul’s intensity quite clearly, I did find Hassell stuck out among the lineup of otherwise metamorphic performances here.
Though I’d seen Blyth before, he felt like a completely different man, embodying Dee with finesse and earnestness. Having seen Hassell in Rivals, Disney+’s great Jilly Cooper adaptation, where he plays a full-blown Cotswold aristocrat with heaps of charm, I found I couldn’t fully lean into his character here. Being a massive Doctor Who fan, I know him best for his small role as a villain in Torchwood, and he draws on that same intensity and dangerousness for this part, but I couldn’t help but find him a little out of place in a cell.
Occasional gaffes in shot continuity also took me out of the moment at times, particularly in regard to (of all things) a Nintendo Switch. You can sentence a man to life without parole, but not without Mario Kart.
Despite over-egging its grungy setting, Wasteman stands as a very solid addition to the prison movie line-up. I was invested in Taylor’s dream of freedom back in the outside world and the precarious path of getting there, but I didn’t expect to find so much worth exploring within Dee’s character as well. It’s a fantastic performance from Blyth, even when the nuances of the script have to be pulled back somewhat to give us enough conflict to chew on, and the film’s angle into the conversation about technology lends it a bit more of an identity that it might’ve had otherwise.
The central dynamic is the jewel here – it works fantastically as an acting showcase – but I still found plenty to enjoy in its brisk ninety minutes.
Wasteman is in cinemas now.
