When Joe needs motivation to reach his quota (initially 50 minimum full circles throughout his 16-hour demanded work day), he has flashbacks to his wife and the baby she’ll soon give birth to. “The Mill” grows from an existential problem of having no exit to untangling worker psychology, presenting it in such a dystopian setting. But while this earns him a gift-a pen with his name engraved-it also makes for a problem for the others to match.

Initially, Joe tries to do a good job and to be an overachiever. No matter how long you're there, you're just passing through.' These ideas of anonymity and manipulation within Thomas' script are dulled by their obvious referencing here, and by horror cinematography that’s just too underlit to be effective. (quoting Doug Herzog) just left his job at 'The Daily Show' last week, 'You don't own these jobs. In the minds of the powerful few, loyalty from the interchangeable is hardly different from submission. The script by Jeffrey David Thomas clearly comes from an angry place about dehumanizing workforce mentalities, including companies that thrive on the hard labor of people who are only numbers to their wealthy masters. Each night, Mallard kills one of his co-workers for underperforming. They play their commercials for him when not playing through Kubrick-beloved classical cuts, hinting at a cold, fascistic rigidity.

The company that Joe works for, the omnipotent, Amazon-like Mallard, is his faceless master who only presents themselves with a cheery voice. He's thrown into this mysterious setting, still wearing the suit he has donned for ten loyal years. The mill is in the middle, and he must subsist only on cafeteria food that's dumped through a little slot: wrapped-up sandwiches, a bottle of water, and chips. Pushing this ancient grist mill is just another day of labor for Howery’s broken, beaten-down Joe, who wakes up inside an open-air prison of three concrete walls.

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