Summary:
A dark comedy about a group of workers who travel to a remote location for an office retreat, but are attacked along the way.
My Thoughts:
Since I started writing and podcasting for TMM, word has more or less gotten out that I am an enormous horror fan (Gasp!), and, as a byproduct, I’ve started to receive more and more horror recommendations, which, I’ll typically try to go out of my way to review in time for the current year’s 31 Nights of Thrills; “Severance” was one of those films recommended to me.
I’ll state right at the top of this review that I liked “Severance”, but I don’t think the film does anything different (or better) than dozens of other horror comedies like “Tucker and Dale vs Evil”, “Cabin in the Woods”, or even this last year’s “Ready or Not”. That being said, this film does provide a few laughs, the kills are pretty cool and are sometimes impressively gory (with great practical effects), and it’s short enough that the runtime sort of just breezed by. “Severance” isn’t a great horror comedy, but it will keep your interest for an hour and forty minutes.
“Sh*t, I’ve left Gordon’s foot on the coach… sorry, mate.”
A group of workers for the Palisade Defense Military Arms Cooperation head off on a retreat for an office team-building exercise. Among their numbers are the manager Richard (Tim McInnerny, “Peterloo”), Harris (Toby Stephens, “Die Another Day”), Gordon (Andy Nyman, “Ghost Stories”), Jill (Claudie Blakley, “Gosford Park”), Maggie (Laura Harris, “The Faculty”) and the goof off of the office Steve (Danny Dyer, “Teen Spirit”). After an accident disables their bus, they have to trek through the woods to the lodge where they intend to stay, but as they head that way, balaclava-masked men hunt them down.
I think anyone that can enjoy horror comedies has to have a somewhat twisted sense of humor, and, thankfully, I do. The film sort of just tosses us right into the heat of things by plopping us down next to a guy and two girls running through the wood; the girls fall in a pit, and the guy is caught in a snare and disemboweled with a huge knife. The girls then try to get out of the pit by tossing tying their clothes together to make a rope and attaching that to a branch to work as a kind of grappling hook; there’s a small tongue-in-cheek joke at the end of this scene where, even though both the girls are down to their bras, they seem to think that using one more piece of clothing might do the trick. It’s sort of making fun of the trope of having topless girls run naked through slasher flicks when, logically, there would be no reason for that to happen. It’s that sort of tongue-in-cheek humor that I appreciated about this film, because it’s obvious to me that the writer of this film was very familiar with horror films and the tropes that come along with them, and they lean in hard on those tropes to pick them apart.
I appreciated the way the relationships between the characters were developed, giving us little information into each character’s personality before the onslaught started to happen; I thought this film did a better job than most horror comedies of making each character feel like an individual, rather than just a random meat-bag propped up to be hacked and slashed through by some faceless baddie. I was a bit nervous at the beginning of this movie because the comic relief character, Steve, was a bit annoying. In the opening scenes they paint Steve as a typical pothead/druggie who tries too hard to flirt with the only girls on the trip and comes off as incredibly annoying. I honestly hoped his character would be the first to die off, but he actually gets better as the film goes on. Gordon, played by Andy Nyman, is one of the funnier characters, and also one of the most hilariously ill fated. Each of the characters really has one or two shining moments that at least made me chuckle.
Verdict:
“Severance” has a few moments that are pretty memorable; it’s fast-paced and not that long; and it has enough bloody images to sate the bloodlust of true horror fans. Though this is a very run-of-the-mill horror comedy, it has enough fun stuff in it for me to recommend it if you were to come across it on a streaming service.
Review Written By: