Bloody Good Severance a Job Well Done

Palisade Defense has been in business for over 75 years. It has supplied arms for all the 20^th Century’s major wars and it wants to do the same now in the new millennium. To that end, company president George Cinders (David Gilliam, The Eagle has Landed) has invited some of his best and brightest to a weekend team building excursion at the company lodge somewhere in the mountainous border region of Budapest.

This lucky group of six can’t believe their good fortune. But when their driver refuses to take a detour and leaves them stranded in the middle of nowhere, enthusiasm turns to exasperation as they all have to make the trek to the location along on old dirt road by foot. For Steve (Danny Dyer, Mean Machine), Maggie (Laura Harris, A Mighty Wind), Richard (Tim McInnerny, Casanova), Harris (Toby Stephens, Die Another Day), Jill (Pride & Prejudice), Gordon (Andy Nyman, Death at a Funeral) and Billy (newcomer Babou Ceesay) exasperation is certainly better than terror, but the later is exactly what they get when a group of masked psychopaths start doing all they can to gruesomely pick the team off one by gory one.

Suddenly “team building exercise” takes on an entirely new meaning. Chased through the woods like animals, evading land minds, bear traps and giant pits, the six corporate snobs discover if they can’t get over their differences and start working together the only thing going to make it out alive are the men doing all they can to kill them. As office trips go, one thing is certainly for certain, for Steve, Maggie and the rest this jaunt in the countryside is nothing short than bloody awful.

The new slightly comedic British thriller Severance is sadistically gruesome good time at the movies. It is smartly constructed, well-acted by its talented ensemble and directed with flair by co-writer Christopher Smith. Certainly better than the filmmaker’s interesting if unexceptional little-seen 2004 suspense flick Creep, this one has a manic energy and madcap electricity impossible for true horror aficionados to dislike. The movie is one heck of a lot of fun, and while it isn’t exactly surprising where it is all heading getting there is such a blast who cares if the film can’t quite avoid one or two clichés?

Okay, maybe I do care, but only just a little bit. While the film does tend to drag on a bit long, and while some of the humor (especially during the last third when the remainder of the Palisade team is sprinting for their lives) is a bit forced, I can’t ever once say I was not entertained. Smith does a great job of ratcheting up the tension, the screenplay managing to bob and weave just enough that I wasn’t always sure who was going to survive and what exactly was going to happen next.

I must admit, there does come a point where all this “torture chic” crap (begun with Saw, continued with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hostel, and brought to apparently new lows in Roland Joffé’s forthcoming Captivity) starts to get a little old. I really can’t say I find it enjoyable to watch a suddenly one-legged man being toyed with by a big burly psychopath wielding a gigantic hunting knife, and lord knows having to endure the sight of a pleading kind-hearted woman being burned to death by a flame thrower is almost more than I can stand.

But it all ends up being such deliciously scary stuff, and the comeuppance leveled upon the attackers is so gloriously macabre (and warranted), putting up with a few distasteful bits is a hardship I’m almost happy to endure. I like B-grade horror movies that know how to thrill, treat me with respect and don’t insult my intelligence. This movie gets most, if not all, of it right, and for fans of the genre that should be more than enough to not give Severance the pink slip and instead buy a ticket for the very next bloody good show.

Film Rating:  êêê  (out of 4)