We've all seen at least one instance of the horror predator-stalks-prey movie genre, right? Movies like Saw or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes? Well, what would you get if you mixed that type of movie with a whole bunch of dry British humor and wit, and stirred it all around? Severance, that's what!
The gist of this dark-humored gorefest is that employees of Palisade, a less-than-ethical weapons manufacturer, decide to take a team-building retreat at some luxury lodge up in the woods. You've got the typical cast of characters: the optimistic boss, the undying loyalist, the slacker druggy, and a few other stereotypes to boot. As the crew makes their way up to the lodge, they come upon a fallen tree on the roadway. Because their stubborn Hungarian bus driver refuses to go on (and summarily abandons them), they decide to hike it to the lodge. Eventually, they find shelter, but it's not the lodge they were anticipating. Little things seem off (like, you know, the place is kind of a dump, and looks like an abandoned house, and it gives people bad dreams), but the optimistic manager convinces everyone to make the best of the situation and to stick with it.
Soon, things get weird. One of the employees finds files of Palisade staffers in the "lodge". A cover up of sorts tied to the weapons biz, perhaps? The employees also suspect the place used to be an asylum. And, one of the employees finds a meat pie, bakes it, and someone promptly finds a human tooth in it. Not weird enough for you? Well, soon after the employees catch wind that something is seriously wrong with the place, the cat-and-mouse game begins: some well-shadowed forces stalk, hunt, capture, and kill the employees one by one, hell-bent on not letting them escape.
I liked that this movie kept presenting scenes of horror and drama, with music blaring and tenses running high, before switching to a bit of comedy to lighten the mood and remind people that this is a horror flick with a funny bone that's not to be taken seriously. And when the funny bone has a British sense of with to it, that makes it all the more hilarious.
Overall rating: 7.0/10.0
Details:
Runtime: 90m
Countries: Germany / United Kingdom
Languages: English / Hungarian / Russian
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