In 1967, a Californian high-school history teacher gaslighted his entire student population into recreating the systematic hierarchy of the Nazi regime. The experiment, now labeled as ‘The Third Wave', was a controversial yet integral academic event which demonstrated the susceptibility of human movement. Ron Jones, the history teacher who successfully demonstrated the horrors of an eradicated democracy, would later be refused tenure two years after the conducted experiment. To this day, we can still witness the influence and importance of Jones' work through the media we consume in our everyday routines. In the case of Jessica Hausner's Club Zero, a similar theme on the susceptibility of adolescent populations is present within her latest deadpan effort.

Akin to the same dangerous methods instigated within The Third Wave experiment, Club Zero is a fictional parable about one teacher's determined efforts to indoctrinate her students with radical fasting methods. The aforementioned comparisons between The Third Wave experiment and Hausner's fictional depictions of contemporary academia are warranted. Club Zero, first and foremost, is a critique on privatised institutions. Both condemning the clients who fund these networks and the academics who run the organisations themselves — Hausner's loose parody often dwindles into narrative obscurity. Big ideas and poor execution are at the crux of her latest deadpan drama.

However, we shouldn't fully discredit Hausner's central allegory. The film employs eating disorders as a literal representation of the soul-sucking dependency of academic excellence. In Club Zero, the student populace is succumbed to an ideological frenzy dependent on the fixation of credit scores. The occasionally sociopathic visual symbolism also represents the dangers of misinformation and radicalisation — as students resort to self-harm for the sanctity of boosting credit scores. The enrolled students themselves are merely looking for a brighter future, as the looming scholarships above their heads determine their frightful post-secondary career paths. Hausner's critique of grading systems and post-secondary prospects is occasionally clever, even if the rest of Club Zero's thematic patchwork is meandering in contrast.

Hausner mainly focuses on the power-roles involved in her intricately scaled drama, where the other hypocritical factors at play are narrowly looked over. As the radicalised teachings emulate an ideology dependent on self-harm for our future generation of students, Hausner often forgets to also contrast and compare the other environmental factors at play. Whereas radical environmentalism is a key factor in Club Zero's critique of privatisation and educational malpractice, the viewer rarely absorbs the integral information needed regarding the funding and management of the school grounds itself.

In the film, we see uniforms and a wide assortment of postmodernist architecture; signifying a clear sense of industrial wealth. However, the viewer fails to understand the financial scope of the system — a narrowed view of the school's environment as portrayed with punchy archetypes. Without the aforementioned information, the critique lacks bite. Who funds the school itself? How much power does the depicted facilities use? Who manufactured the wasteful uniforms? There's too many questions that leave far too much open room to interpretation regarding Hausner's critical grievances. The central parody of radical environmentalism feels empty as a result, never once earned in the grand scope of its cinematic condemnations.

In contrast with her previous deadpan efforts, Club Zero is a beguiling continuation of Hausner's style. In Little Joe, there's a clear establishment of two concise ideas from the get-go. We witness the motherhood perspective firsthand, as the looming fate of the lead protagonist's pharmaceutical work is infiltrated by the pleasures of capitalist-rooted profits. The rushed production of a new antidepressant flower radically ramps into a botanical nightmare, where suppressed human emotion takes hold of the film's cast of nonchalant characters. Club Zero fails to bring forward the same clarity and nuance as Little Joe's narrative proclamations. Whereas there's a clear understanding of the narrative's sociological, economical, and environmental factors at play in Little Joe; there is unfortunately an absence of perspective within Club Zero. Due to a lack of specificity, Hausner is caught in a dreadful limbo of wandering themes and empty provocations.

Hausner's latest is an unfinished puzzle; as scattered pieces are spread across a floor of unfinished ideas. We only see a partial image of a finished product, as the viewer is merely exposed to the ideological factors at play in Hausner's deadpan narrative. What's missing are the financial and environmental angles of Club Zero's commentary. The result is a toothless critique. Without the necessary bite, the vagueness of the film's images amounts to very little emotional catharsis. Club Zero is an incomplete exercise, as the disturbing visual allegories rarely tantalise the film's form.