CHAOS WALKING (12A)

AVAILABLE FROM FRIDAY ON MAJOR STREAMING PLATFORMS

If innermost thoughts and base desires were exposed as gaseous audio chatter around our heads, we’d probably be driven mad by the unfiltered cacophony.

Prejudice, intolerance, jealousy, lust – all shamefully broadcast as unvarnished and discomfiting candour to friends, family and passing strangers.

Thinking out loud is commonplace in director Doug Liman’s dystopian sci-fi thriller.

Taken from the first book of a young adult trilogy penned by Patrick Ness, Chaos Walking harnesses slick digital effects to realise a nightmarish world stripped of privacy.

Ness and co-writer Christopher Ford opt for bombastic, action-oriented storytelling and a futuristic battle for fractured hearts and minds becomes another blushing pretender to The Hunger Games’ cinematic crown.

Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland abandon the Star Wars and Marvel Comics universes to lend their undeniable star wattage to the adventure

Orphaned runt Todd Hewitt (Holland) lives on the mid-23rd century planet of New World in the exclusively male settlement of Prentisstown with adoptive fathers Ben Moore (Demian Bichir) and Cillian Boyd (Kurt Sutter). The women, including Todd’ s mother, were killed by the indigenous species, the Spackle, abandoning grief-stricken men to their thoughts, which are audible and visible as a swirling, iridescent cloud-like noise.

Mayor David Prentiss (Mads Mikkelsen) has mastered the art of silencing his stream of consciousness, which allows him to exert control over the townsfolk.

Faint flickers of resistance are snuffed out by his hot-headed son David (Nick Jonas) and the righteous indignation of a preacher (David Oyelowo).

A spaceship crash-lands close to Prentisstown.

The sole survivor, Viola Eade (Ridley), isn’t cursed with the noise and her stoic silence poses a grave threat to the mayor’s iron-fisted rule. Chaos Walking clearly signals its intentions, as if afflicted by the noise, and propels Todd and Viola on their blood-soaked odyssey.