Bargain Tuesday is a great thing at Cineworld, £4.20 to watch any film that would cost you an alarming £7-odd quid at the weekend. This week, I went with my boyfriend to watch Severance, a new British Comedy Horror film by Chistopher Smith, who previously wrote and directed Creep.
A group of peeps working for a weapons distributor are on a coach in Hungary travelling to a luxury lodge owned by their employer, who has sent them there on a team building weekend. There's overenthusiatic uber-geek Gordon, wideboy Steve, sexy American Maggie, prim and proper Jill, public school playboy Harris and Billy, the clever quiet one. The group is led by stubborn Brent-esque manager Richard. They are travelling towards the lodge when the driver stops abruptly as he finds a tree blocking the road. Richard tries to use his management prowess to force him to go via an alternative route but the driver flips out, yelling in Hungarian, before dragging their luggage off the coach and abandoning them.
The group end up trekking through the spooky woods to find the lodge and after getting thoroughly spooked (especially Steve, who has been gobbling down the magic mushrooms), they finally reach their destination, and luxury it ain't. After a series of further eery events overnight in the shack, riling each other with myths about previous arms dealers and their unfortunate fates, the group decide to try and escape. Harris and Jill hop off to find a signal on their phones to ring for help, whilst the others stay, as follow-the-rules Richard manages to get the others to stay and play at paintballing until they return. At this point, the innocent team-building weekend descends into ultimate chaos and slowly the gang are picked off brutally-and more entertainingly-gorily. Will any of them survive and defeat the beast chasing them? That is the question…
This was meant to be a serious contender to Simon Pegg's Shaun of the Dead but I don't think it came close to being as good. SOTD was funny consistently, whereas the laughs in Severance were mainly down to only two characters, Gordon the Geek and junkie Steve. Having said that, nitpickers would have a field day with this film, example: Essex boy Steve basically took most known drugs in this film and was generally off his face throughout- I suppose this was written to make him funnier, but do you really think an employee would be so obvious about his habits on a work team-building weekend, with his line manager?! There was a lot of gore in the film, and if you're into horrors and excessive violence, go for it, but really the film is full of clichés, bad jokes and unnecessary bloodiness- how it got past the censors with a mere '15' certificate is beyond me. I think it was written as a spoof, but never got quite funny enough to be properly classed as one.
The film IS amusing, but don't go along expecting it to be a piece of world class film-making, or a satirical masterpiece; it's neither. It was okay for a Bargain Tuesday film, but I'd be annoyed if I paid extortionate weekend prices to see this. If you're feeling a little infantile, then maybe it's one to watch.
Danny Dyer - Steve Tim McInnery - Richard Toby Stephens- Harris Claudie Blakley- Jill Andy Nyman - Gordon Babou Ceesay - Billy
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Production Year: 2000 - Horror - Director: Keenen Ivory Wayans - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Carmen Electra, Anna Faris, Kurt Fuller, James Van Der Beek, Keenen Ivory Wayans
Advantages: Good british film with excellent british actors, a lot of suspense in some parts! Disadvantages: Danny Dyer just doesn't suit this role at all!
tonyanwas 16.01.2007 ·
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Review of Severance (DVD)
Sep 11th, 2006
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