Severance: the movie that tells us what happens when you take the characters from The Office, send them on a team building holiday and throw in some eastern European serial killers. A little quirky, and even though the humor/horror mix is just a little off, Severance is still a pretty fun movie.
International contractor, Palisades Defense, sends seven of their employees on a team building excursion in Eastern Europe. When the road is blocked, on sage advice of the boss, the employees abandon the motor-coach and head down a heavily wooded road to find their luxury lodge. Little do they know a killer is waiting around the corner, bent on killing each of them. In proper British style, victims die with a stiff upper lip and killers kill in ridiculous ways. Don't worry though, not everyone rolls over and accepts their fate.
Severance's biggest problem is that it can't really decide if it is a dark comedy or a horror movie with brief moments of levity. There are a lot of bloody scenes but I can't think of an explicit death scene. Just before the death, the camera pulls away and sometimes returns just after the death, so it doesn't feel like a strict horror. There are a lot of attempts at comedy but only a few will leave you laughing out loud, so it doesn't feel like a sinister comedy. Director/writer Christopher Smith and writers Toby Stephens and James Moran would have benefited from having an accomplished comedic writer there to touch up the scenes that were attempting humor.
Severance isn't completely void of humor. There is a scene that will redefine the expression "Heads will roll." Later in the movie, there is a scene that made me laugh so hard at the misfortunes of the killer. The end of the movie made me laugh with reckless abandon. The scene that takes the cake involves a mini-fridge, a shoe and slippery fingers. I didn't want to laugh, because it was just wrong, but I couldn't help it! After the movie is over, stick around for the credits; they are brief but the character names of the bad guys are funny enough to make the credits worth watching.
Andy Nyman, who plays Gordon, was my favorite male character. Gordon is an annoyingly optimistic character, much to the chagrin of the other Palisades employees. He tries to make every negative a positive. I wanted to strangle him about three minutes into the movie. I think he was fantastically written. I believe that the writers were trying to make him painfully cheery and they accomplished their goal with flying colors.
There is a moderate amount of creativity in the kill scenes. They took all of the instruments of death they could think of, threw out the quiet ones, tossed the ones that wouldn't create a mess, and scrapped the Plain-Janes, and were left with a collection of mercenary style implements of doom! Sure, there are knives and guns, but the kill scenes that use the classics aren't done in the same-old ways. There is a scene where hundreds of people are killed and I snickered, rolled my eyes and finally gave into the laughter pushing its way up!
I wish there had been a little bit more attention to the actual deaths of the characters. As I mentioned above, I can't remember a single scene where you actually see someone die. I feel a little funny saying this, but it's a horror movie, show us the money. I can't believe that someone is actually dead unless we see them dead. In the horror movie rules it goes, 1. Never say "I'll be right back." 2. Never investigate a weird or strange noise, especially alone, and 3. Don't assume they are dead unless you see them dead, and maybe even not then. How can I believe that the killers actually killed the victim if you aren't following the rules?
As always, I love it when there are bad ass bitches in horror movies that refuse to wait for some man to save them and Severance has its share of whoop-ass women! Not all the women survive but their attempts at survival are memorable and commendable.
This movie would benefit from a re-visitation by someone a little more skilled at finding the proper mix of humor and horror. This may be the only time you hear this from me but I can't wait until an American film maker finds the time to remake this movie. Even still, Severance is worth seeing, flaws and all.
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