Severance

" When a weapons multi-national Palisade Defense reward their European sales division with a team-building weekend in the mountains of Eastern Europe, comedy blends with horror as the team fight first amongst themselves, and later for survival against a group of war-crazed killers intent on revenge."

When my friend managed to land a job in the glamerous world of showbiz, I was waiting for the preview invites to come rolling in...and they did, well, sort of...

At first glance the plot sounds quite promising, or, as one review put it, "the Office meets Deliverance"...and to be fair the film did have its moments. As the band of war crazed killers (who seem to have been taken from RussianStereotypes.com) approaches the lodge, the American boss (who, unaware of the plight of English employees had been hanging out with a pair of Hungarian hookers) comes charging out - eager to test a new piece of 'highly advanced' weaponry and to kill the t'urrisrt motherfuckers, fires what looks like a Stinger missile at the approaching pair...which of course misses completely, shoots into the air and hits a passing plane (a referecne to the US shooting down an Iranian airliner off the Persian Gulf? Well perhaps not...). Another brilliant exchange comes when Palisade's answer to David Brent (played by Tim Tim McInnereny of Blackadder fame) exclaims, when one of his employees suggests that, maybe, Palisade have done things slightly less than ethical, that,

"Palisade is a public company...my God, we've got representatives of both our governments on the board"...

Overall, the movie makes for an entertaining enough diversion for an hour and a half...however, the attempt to build suspense for the first half of the film didn't really work (at least for me); and the sheer number of stock characters and cliches was a bit wearing at times. Also the ending was somewhat protracted. And anyone who doesn't like blood is advised to stay away (ever wondered what it would be like to see a guy's foot squashed into a mini-fridge ?)...

On the whole, Severance walks the fine line between funny and tacky...if you want any semblance of serious horror (or comedy for that matter) look elsewhere...but in the teen horror/mindless flick market Severance makes a worthwhile choice...


2 out of 5 Chainsaws...