‘Mission’ review: George MacKay gives a committed performance in propulsive, overwrought mental health drama

Dir/scr: Paul Wright. UK. 2026. 87mins

An extreme mental health crisis with roots in childhood trauma underpins this defiantly brutal and uncompromising Scottish indie feature. It offers a committed performance from George MacKay (who also starred in writer-director Paul Wright’s 2013 debut feature For Those In Peril) the film’s disturbed protagonist, Dylan. Mission is sympathetic and inquiring in its attempt to understand this man’s severe breakdown through often impressively experimental means. But it also stretches credulity too often and leans into cinematic pyrotechnics too heavily to be fully convincing.

Leans into cinematic pyrotechnics too heavily to be fully convincing

A man on a mission usually signifies something positive: someone with a clear goal ahead, striving to achieve it. But when that goal is suicide, it becomes terrifying to witness. To Wright’s credit, he confronts this reality with vigour and fearlessness. There’s no escaping that Mission is a tough watch, and that’s before considering its ultra-choppy approach to storytelling, its refusal to answer some of the questions it poses and its relentless frontal assault of sound and vision. The film has its world premiere in Edinburgh competition, and audiences with an appetite for innovation may run with its bold storytelling – although its commercial potential is surely modest.

The past and present carry almost equal weight in the life of Dylan (MacKay), who is working as a waiter in a boutique hotel in an unnamed Scottish city. He loses his job after a disastrous encounter with a preening visiting CEO (Emun Elliott) to whom he’s savagely honest: ‘I don’t feel like myself’. We also learn early in the film, via Dylan’s copious inner monologue (‘I can’t connect to anyone or anything’) that he’s planning to end his life. There are regular flashbacks to childhood and home-video footage, many of them focused on Dylan’s close earlier relationship with his sister Claire, with whom he now struggles to connect. We hear the concern of Claire (Rosy McEwen) at the other end of the phone, and her simple question, ‘Are you ok?’ feels loaded with years of struggle we can only imagine. 

From there, Dylan propels himself through a series of extreme events and encounters involving, at various points, knives, a gun, a BDSM session, a nightclub, a standoff on a public bus and a monkey. It’s a whirlwind of fast, unsettling edits and jumps between then and now, as well as regular flashes of library footage (buildings being demolished, crowds, protests) whose significance is unclear other than to suggest a troubled mind. Through it all, MacKay gives it his all; it’s an assault course of a performance, physically and emotionally, and you can see Dylan’s pain written deeply on the actor’s face. 

Editors Michael Aaglund and Jen Mackie deliver a frenetic experience of escalating tension and the sound design is equally unsettling, reinforced by an intense soundtrack that includes The Fall, Big Business, The Cramps and Throbbing Gristle. The film hints repeatedly at a crucial experience in Dylan’s childhood, mostly through voiceover: ‘When I was a child, I died for seven minutes…I saw a glimpse into what was possible in this world’. One of the strengths of Mission is that Wright clearly wants to avoid easy explanations for severe mental illness, but it is also a fundamental frustration given the heavy focus on a seminal incident that remains oddly vague.

The energy and propulsion of this journey through one young man’s disintegrating life is undeniable. Yet the sheer number of extreme episodes is a problem as it dilutes the peril of individual moments, and some showier visual tricks (such as fireworks going off in the street or a questionable use of extreme makeup) have the same distracting effect. It’s in the quieter, more human moments that you really feel Dylan’s torment, and when the film is at its strongest. Mission is a full-on experience – possibly too full-on to communicate the thoughtfulness that’s embedded within it, but never unengaging.