The immediate future looks bleak for working-class London in The Kitchen, a well-executed film about a familiar kind of dystopian urban nightmare. Ironically, it's brighter than Los Angeles in “Blade Runner,” but the mood is just as bad.
In this world, the have-nots huddle together in brutal, hellish high-rises, a slum-like area whose residents call “the kitchen.” With frequent police raids and constant surveillance, there is a whiff of rebellion in the air. But at least for the purposes of this story, the tensions have not yet boiled over into a proper revolution—the anger manifests itself in smaller petty crimes, such as raiding and seizing jewelry.
Protagonist Eazy (rapper Kane Robinson) has a stable job, selling “ecological” and “humane” burial plans to desperate, grieving poor people. It's all painted white, sleek, and a little evil in there – it's called “Life After Life” after all. He and his colleagues wear clinical scrubs as they sell people on the idea of turning their dead loved ones into plants.
He also has a plan: get out. He has saved enough money to escape from The Kitchen and finally breaks through the queue pitfall to get into one of the city's luxury apartment buildings. One job for one man. Naturally, the film wouldn't let him go that easily, but the complexity isn't just financial: a child enters the picture.
One day at work, he noticed that the woman he once dated was having a funeral in the building. Inside, he discovers her son Benji (Jediah Bannerman), a teenager who doesn't know who his father is. The two dance around the obvious question, and Benji ends up on Izy's doorstep needing something—help, housing, care—but again, these things are largely unspoken. Benji is having a sliding doors kind of moment where the quick money from dangerous smash-and-grabs almost seems worth the risk. What does he have to lose anyway?
“The Kitchen” is directed by “Get Out” directors Daniel Kaluuya and Kiboy Tavares, who previously looked at the intersection of architecture, race and class in “Robots of Brixton.” Kaluuya co-wrote the script with Joe Murtagh, and was inspired by a story he heard about “kids doing multi-million dollar robberies in one minute for £200”. “The Kitchen” may drag at times, but it is a stunning, fully realized work from first-time feature directors with beautifully raw sequences of both emotion and action.
It's a joy to watch Izzie and Benji navigate this awkward relationship, both questioning how much they can trust each other. But in this world of urban isolation, it's clear, at least to us, that they need each other — no matter how much you encourage Izzy to make it happen. There are also moments of humor in this rather serious case, including Izy's frustrating conversation with an AI customer service representative.
Like many future dystopias, “The Kitchen” is about the present — about class divisions, wealth gaps, unaffordable housing, and the ways things are getting worse very quickly. This is one of those movies that could have been fun on the big screen with its urgent action sequences and propulsive nightclub scenes, but it's a perfect watch for the small screen as well. Hopefully this is the start of a big directorial career for Kaluuya and Tavares, who prove they have something worthwhile to say and the vision to make it interesting, too.
“The Kitchen,” which dropped on Netflix on Friday, received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America for “language.” Showing duration: 107 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
