Three parts. One goal. No forgiveness. The SAT comes every year without fail, forcing millions of students across the country into classrooms of endless desks filled with dread in the crack of dawn. There is no character to root for, no plot worth following, and no visuals worth admiring. This film is not for everyone. But unfortunately, everyone needs it.
The College Board, as the director of this ruthless film, brings an uncompromising vision to the project. It is a cold approach with no concern for the audience’s emotional experience. The harsh time constraints to the confusing answer choices feel planned and calculated to mislead the audience. While other directors make films for their audiences, the College Board makes the SAT for their own pleasure.
The cinematography of this film deserves its own essay. The setting is sparse and unforgiving. Fluorescent lights, rows of identical desks, sharpened pencils, and a clock that moves slower than any clock in history. It is a masterclass of building fear and anxiety through the environment alone. The production team makes it clear that you are there for one reason and one reason only. You are not here to enjoy yourself. You are here to be measured.
The test comes in three acts. It opens with the slow burn of the reading section. The audience is buried with dense passages from the niche 19th-century literary pieces to arguments of city infrastructure. By the halfway point, most viewers have already gotten lost. The supporting cast—the other students in the classroom—are in the same boat. The writing sections involve mind-boggling vocabulary and various turns of phrase. The last act—the math section—spreads across two sections, a non-calculator and a calculator section. What starts off with easy linear equations quickly spirals to complex trigonometry and calculus that feel less like mathematics and more like a subtle attack. By the end, the protagonist has been drained of the energy they have left, and the director knows it.
The central character, the test taker, is the most intricate part of this experience. They arrive overconfident, ready to conquer the test with their two #2 pencils and a graphing calculator. As they progress through the test, the overconfidence wavers and they become a changed person. The rest of the students offer no reassurance. Everyone is suffering. Nobody looks up from their test. It is the loneliest cast of a film ever made.
Beneath the surface, the SAT gestures at deeper and difficult themes. It presents itself as a measure of potential, the great equalizer, presented to every student for a fair shot. What it actually measures is a student’s ability to sit for three hours, to make decisions in time, and not to panic when a person seated nearby flips pages faster than you. Whether this truly predicts success for the future is a question that remains unanswered.
But the film doesn’t end with the timer striking zero. Another timer begins to tick. The timer is waiting for your scores. With scores taking anywhere from two to four weeks to arrive, students wait anxiously for the score that will determine whether they must endure another screening. The College Board offers no updates on what is to come. When the score finally appears, you hear either fanfare or a sad trombone. The number is delivered onscreen without consolation or context. It is the coldest ending in film history.
In the end, the SAT is not a test of intelligence. It is about endurance. It asks how long you can hold it together before the second math section finishes you off. As a previous viewer, it is bleak and unrelenting, and exactly how long it takes to break you at the end of it. Four out of ten. Would not recommend. Will never watch it again.
