Exodus

A miserable view of the near-future is the stuff of Woolcock's well-meant but clumsy 'Exodus', an Artangel-Film4 collaboration which is a loose retelling of the story of Moses that manages to offer vague references to 9/11, fascism, South Africa, Guantánamo, Palestine, Sangatte and other buzz issues, places and events in a hysterical drama of political corruption and interfamilial tension that casts a dark shadow over the word 'devised'. Set in a coastal town – and filmed in Margate – Woolcock's uneasy Britain has succumbed to a right-wing police state and a violent form of apartheid that has spawned a fortified and wild coastal community that will be familiar to anyone who has seen 'Children of Men' and that colludes to build a burning totem straight out of 'The Wicker Man'.