When someone mentions a horror satire set in the corporate workplace, i.e. the office, the black humorist in us all hopes for something akin to Mike Judge’s Office Space, with perhaps an Ed Woodian good-natured nudge in the ribs, replete with buckets of blood. However, Christopher Smith’s Severance isn’t that film, in lieu of the double entendre potential of its title. Instead, the feature is the trademark reason for profs electing to focus upon American literature instead of British: unrewarding desert-dry humor and languid storytelling.
Granted, Smith does well in giving us the signature personalities of the Corporate Cubical –the domineering boss who is veiling his insecurities through the faux power of his position while not possessing a single iota of common sense because no protocol has been issued on the particular topic; the goody-two-shoes, brown-nose suck-up; the pretty girl who gets paid for her looks because she has no skills whatsoever; the slacker druggie; etc. etc.–but, alas, how many horror fans, on average, don a tie before setting off to work each day? And this is only one of the many misfires the filmmaker makes in respect to his audience. Even though the title and plot summary evoke visions of–as one critic put it–bloody dismissals with a Swingline, we are thrust into the ho-hum woods once again, given an intentionally vague back story meant to haunt us, and then set in the corner and told to wait. And wait we do. The Achilles Heel of the production is that, when our reward finally arrives, what we have paid for it far outweighs the value of the prize.
A troupe of corporate execs, suits-and-ties from a defense supplier no less, get stranded in the Hungarian woods (don’t ask) after setting out for a “team building” project (a nightmare onto itself). After a not-so-cute allusion to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” (to say nothing of the gaggle of Kubrickian references throughout, not one of which is thematically relevant to The Shining), linguistic juggling in the hope of wry humor sets our thumbs to twiddling. To put it another way, Severance is a film where you find yourself forcing a laugh in the vain attempt at convincing yourself that it isn’t that bad, that your disappointment isn’t so great, and that you’re not wasting your life needlessly.
Yes, Severance is a comedy and, indeed, there are a handful of jokes which are guaranteed to set the audience reeling–such as if there are bears in the Hungarian woods, how not to release someone from a bear trap, if a severed head can see and for how long after decapitation (in lieu of this question being addressed in another horror work years before, Reb Braddock’s Curdled), and if heat-seeking missiles will target terrorists–but at the expense of our precious patience. As any veteran of comedy knows, the key to laughs is timing, i.e. pacing, which Severance does not have as it cumbersomely attempts to juxtapose terror with laughs. The greatest mistake on behalf of the director? Forgetting that the medium (viewer expectation be damned) is largely rooted in the physical, thus–where Edgar Wright (and Tim Burton and Sam Raimi and Mel Brooks . . . ) knows that the key to making horror funny is slapstick–Smith erroneously aims for our brains.
Not to beleaguer a film which drains its audience any more, Christopher Smith’s Severance is an amateur affair whose ambitions are set too high given the creator’s lack of experience. Given more time and a lot more writing under their belts, the filmmakers might have been able to tighten the script enough to keep the proceedings consistent but, alas, not this time.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
