Cal McMau’s fast-paced feature-length directorial debut, Wasteman, is an intense look at life inside a U.K. prison, with violence and tension from the very first scene. The film premiered worldwide at TIFF in September 2025, drawing attention for its gripping portrayal of confinement and survival.

The audience experiences the story from the point of view of Taylor, labelled a “wasteman,” who has spent most of his adult life behind bars. He is serving time in a U.K. prison not because he is a criminal mastermind but because he made foolish, regrettable choices.

He has missed most of his son’s life and contributed nothing to it. He says he wants a relationship with him after wasting an earlier opportunity to do so. This time, he must choose not to waste another chance.

David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus) draws viewers in with a powerfully subdued performance that makes this film’s distinctive approach to the prison drama even more engaging. As Taylor, Jonsson embodies the character and conveys emotional depth through restrained expression and focus, much of it communicated through his eyes. 

Taylor is controlled by the atypical prison range boss, played by Alex Hassell, who, with a cavalier yet precise wielding of power, can command his enforcer, played by Coring Silva, to intimidate or brutalize anyone who crosses them.

The film opens with a graphic and violent scene that makes the viewer acutely aware of the trauma a timid person like Taylor endures as he tries to stay out of the way while serving time behind bars. He does his best to remain incognito simply to survive his sentence.

If Taylor is an inmate in his early thirties, he carries himself with the naivety of a teenage boy. He remains low-key under the misguided notion that he could receive early release for good behaviour.

His new cellmate, Dee, played by Tom Blyth (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), is the opposite. A bold, brazen, seasoned criminal, Dee chooses to make his presence known. In body language, posture, and lived experience, the two young men could not be more different. Yet they find themselves in the same place.

Blyth takes up space literally and figuratively yet knows when to pull back just enough for the audience to feel the impact of his presence. At times, the cadence of their exchanges — Dee, like a lion in a cage pacing before deciding to attack, and Taylor, observing, fraught with a restrained fear – creates tension between the two men, amplifying what’s at stake for them both. 

Time is said to pass slowly on the inside, but in the chaos of many men locked in cramped quarters, things can shift quickly. Screenwriters Hunter Andrews and Eoin Doran depict the raw, volatile environment of the prison system such that, for 90 minutes, there is no rest for the viewer.

Cinematographer Lorenzo Levrini’s shot selection reinforces that volatility. The film shifts dramatically from tight angles that capture Taylor’s isolating anxiety to broader frames that reflect Dee’s expansive view of chaos, opportunity, and power as he adjusts to the new range. Cellphone footage is used effectively to portray gritty conditions. McMau maintains a fast pace with sequences of violence, drug use, and the constant threat of confrontation.

Over time, the intensity may feel excessive, but it reinforces the reality that prison systems are marked by high levels of violence, persistent understaffing and overcrowding, and that the threat of violence can be as frightening and damaging as the act itself.