Alicia Vikander has to act like a child in this strange, but affective futuristic drama.

Let’s begin with the look of “The Assessment” before we get to the premise. We open with Elizabeth Olsen and Hamish Patel playing a couple named Mia and Aaryan in a futuristic home that looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but is by the ocean.

Here are some colorful rooms and things worthy of a color palette Instagram post. There are some stained glass windows having colors and designs almost like “The Partridge Family.” Their front room is red, their kitchen is green, and their living room is yellow. They have a black room with black sand and a skylight, and the whole room allows them, for example, to design a black chimpanzee, while Aaaryan wears glasses and black clothes like he’s trying to mimic Steve Jobs. How is it done? Through magic and science.

And they also have a greenroom with a rare orchid that’s in bloom, and enough vegetables for their sustenance. Quite an ideal place to be raising a family. Speaking of which, here comes Alicia Vikander as a woman named Virginia, who must give the couple and a week’s assessment to see if they are qualified with raising a a child. She’s known as an assessor, hence the title: “The Assessment.”

Virginia also needs to study the aspects of their relationship, meaning, she has to be by their open door when they have sex (“Just imagine I’m not here,” she says), and the next few days, she has to pretend to be their child, by acting like a baby at the breakfast table or running around playfully. Just to test how they would react towards their own child. That is if they’re allowed to have one.

There are many hardships Virginia puts the couple through, and while I get tired of the child’s play, I wasn’t with the very nature “The Assessment” is trying to convey.

An example: she looks like she’s drowning at the beach, and Mia saves her, but she is pretending to be a starfish.

Another example: there’s a dinner party with Minnie Driver playing one of their guests-the cold-hearted assessor Evie-and Virginia still acting like a child at the dinner table. Even the real child Amelia (Anaya Thorley) asks how old she is, and is called a brat by Evie, as she should be doing.

These are just some of the aspects of what goes down during this week period, and “The Assessment” feels like something out of a David Cronenberg movie, based on the strange and affective filmmaking style by Fleur Fortuné in her feature directorial debut. Her background consists of music videos for M83, Travis Scott, and Skrillex, among others.

I never dreamed I’d see Vikander acting like a child, after playing a humanoid android in “Ex Machina” or more elegant roles in “A Royal Affair” and “The Danish Girl” or an agent in “Jason Bourne.” And yet, underneath the stress and behaviors, she delivers as a person trying to test the couple’s patience.

Olsen continues to break free from her Scarlet Witch persona, and her tone and acting really delivers the humanity. Especially in one scene when she laughs at a certain choice made by her husband. And speaking of which, Patel has an interesting and sometimes stylish consistency. In fact, Vikander, Olsen, and Patel are all capable of being in a Cronenberg movie, and Fortuné has proof of that potential.

“The Assessment” has a colorful look thanks to that lovely house, it has fine performances thanks to the cast, and it has a lot of strange and twisted aspects, no thanks to A24 or NEON. But not every twisted film has to be released by them, and Magnolia Pictures makes a good call distributing it.