You can still scare audiences with a straightforward slasher movie, a fact which Severance proves in spades. Directed by Christopher Smith (Creep) from the script by James Moran, the story follows a hapless set of coworkers on a corporate retreat that turns deadly.
For reasons left unexplained, the employees of a weapons manufacturer have been awarded a trip to Romania, where they will romp through woods that seem more suited to young Hannibal Lecter than to paintball. The bus driver refuses to drive them past a certain point, so they walk several miles to what is supposed to be the corporate retreat center but looks more like an abandoned cottage.
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Tim McInnerny ("Black Adder") plays company man Richard, hellbent on conducting team-building exercises in spite of the fact that the trip is falling apart around his ears. Not even strange faces in the woods or a pie with a tooth baked into it can deter his sunshiney outlook on the situation.
Severance starts off as a funny corporate satire, but once the scares kick in, the movie goes straight to the heart of the horror with deliciously terrifying events. It's a straightforward genre pick without the comic revisionism of Shawn of the Dead or the sadism of the Hostel and Saw movies, a quick and scary slasher film that more thaneve achieves its one modest ambition: to scare.
Photo:
Judit Viktor, Danny Dyer and Juli Drajko in SEVERANCE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
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May 16, 2007 - 9:59pm
