Blast

Blast (Déflagrations, 2022) is a French thriller you can watch online on iFILM. Sonia climbs into her car in a Paris underground garage with her son and her boyfriend's daughter, and then can't get out: someone has wired an anti-tank mine to the chassis. The countdown reads thirty minutes.

The cruel twist is that Sonia (Nora Arnezeder) defuses bombs for a living, an NGO specialist just back from a mission in Ukraine. Doing it in a war zone is one thing; cutting wires with two children strapped in behind her is another. Her boyfriend Fred is locked outside, useless to her, while colleagues Igor and Camille race over to help. As the clock runs, a second question opens up: who planted the mine under this particular family, and why.

Director Vanya Peirani-Vignes shoots almost the whole thing inside the cramped car, and the confinement does more for the tension than any blast could. It's for fans of single-location, real-time thrillers like Buried — except here it isn't one life on the line but a family quietly coming apart under the pressure. Stream Blast (2022) online on iFILM.