Reality begins in a dimly lit office, flat screen televisions adorning the walls as Fox News plays footage of former FBI director James Comey while reporting on his firing by Donald Trump. Later, Reality Winner (Sydney Sweeney) will cite the incessant drone of Fox News as one of the reasons for her sending classified documents about Russian interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept. It’s a direct quote, as is the entire script. Based on the play Is This A Room by Tina Satter, who also directs in her feature debut, Reality is a chilling and clinical look at the surveillance state and a fraught time for the United States as a whole, with a transformative performance from Sweeney as the title whistleblower.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAYSCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Reality takes place in real time over the course of 83 minutes and the film makes it immediately clear that it is drawing from the transcript of conversations between Reality Winner and FBI Agents R. Wallace Taylor (a stoic Marchant Davis) and Justin C. Garrick (an unsettling Josh Hamilton). Realty rarely deviates from its set course. Instead, it lingers with Reality in front of her Augusta, Georgia home before it follows her into an unfurnished white room where she stands against a wall while she is interrogated. There are brief asides — Reality’s life in the office is shown and Satter also interjects with images from the real Reality’s Instagram profile to corroborate some of the things she says.

Sydney Sweeney in Reality. 

Other than these interjections, Reality is stone-cold in its stillness, an unnerving score punctuating the background and amping up the anxiety. Satter’s only other flourishes are brief moments where the transcript is redacted and Reality herself glitches out of existence. The first time this happens is shocking — until that point, Reality has been grounded quite firmly in the real. This touch, though, seems to say directly what the film cannot: the threat looming over Reality is quite real and, by the end of the film, she will be in handcuffs and on her way to serving a sentence in prison. The government will make her disappear one way or another.

The United States prison system is threat enough, but Reality ensures that a feeling of quiet menace lingers. It plays almost like a crime thriller where police are approaching a scene and violence could break out at any second. The threat isn’t aimed at the police this time, though. FBI agents — all men, all looming over Reality in stature, status, and [blank] — populate the screen while Sweeney looks on both numb and terrified. The men stand in her bedroom, adorned with pink curtains, leafing through journals and joking about the animals she so clearly cares about. The FBI is not being openly threatening, but they don’t have to be. Their mere presence is a threat in and of itself, their invasion of Reality’s home an act of violence that Sweeney and Satter portray with a nimbleness that is so light it could almost be missed if it weren’t so blatantly horrifying.

Sweeney — most known for her other HBO role as queen of mess Cassie on Euphoria — is transformative here. She plays Reality’s growing anxiety in such a way that it seeps from the screen and allows the dread to sink in deeply. Her eyes dart around as black SUVs surround her yard, as her dog barks outside for its owner, as the slow realization that she won’t be able to get out of this dawns on her. It’s a tricky performance. So much of it is based on the actual person being portrayed, but Sweeney proves more than capable, an exciting turn for those who can’t wait to see her outside the confines of her Euphoria role and in more nuanced territory.

Ultimately, Reality is a straightforward film. Save for a few touches, there are no big swings, no stretches of the truth. Satter blends documentary and narrative in a way that shines a light on how America tells stories about itself and the counter-narratives that arise from its need to protect itself. The film ends with a few title cards that reveal Winner’s prison sentence and take aim at The Intercept for its failure to protect its source. It also makes sure to highlight the fact that, mere days after Reality was taken into custody, government officials were openly discussing the contents of the documents that she had leaked. There is no justice in the treatment Reality received. Satter knows it, Sweeney knows it, and Reality knows it. There was just nothing Winner could do about it when up against a monster trying to protect itself.

Reality [premieres on HBO and Max on May 26. The film is rated TV-MA is 83 minutes long.