London Film Festival was great, as was Kevin Smith chatting away at the Indigo 02
London Film Festival was great, as was Kevin Smith chatting away at the Indigo 02
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Severance, the latest brit flick comedy/thriller/horror to hit our screens, has been described as a cross between 'The office' and 'Deliverance'. A comedy horror to follow on from the mega successes of Dog Soldiers and Shaun of The Dead is what Severance wants to be while sadly all it manages to do is to be a pale imitation of the two. While the idea behind it is not too bad it is clichéd as hell and borrows from so many other films that it never really manages to form an identity of its own.
I was looking forward to this, the trailer and the press reviews made it sound as if it would be a very good mix of genres and would live up to my expectations. For me though the story did not have enough shocks to be a horror, enough thrills to be a thriller or enough comic moments to be a comedy! It is hard to pull off a good comedy horror mix and to do so you have to get right on the line between seriousness and parody, or at least treat the whole thing with a deadly seriousness. Playing the whole thing straight is what makes the comedy stand out amongst the craziness.
Snakes On A Plane managed this, as did Slither and Shaun Of The Dead in recent times. The script in all of these plays it very very straight, letting the absurd situation the characters find themselves in bring in the horror and thrills, rather than trying to make you laugh, or trying too hard to scare you.
Severance is the story of a group of Palisade Defense employees on a team building exercise in Hungary. They are a mixed bunch, though very atypical of groups in films. There is the drugged up comedian Steve (Danny Dyer - Football Factory), the arrogant know it all Harris (Toby Stephens - Die Another Day), the geek Gordon (Andy Nyman), the ineffectual team leader Richard (Tim McInnery - Black Adder, Notting Hill), the politically correct woman Jill (Claudie Blakley - Gosford Park), the black assistant Billy (Babou Ceesay) and the good looking woman Maggie (Laura Harris - Dead Like Me & 24 series 2). All in all they are a right mixed bunch who you find it really hard to believe would ever remotely get on, let alone get themselves talked into going to a retreat together.
When they find the route to the lodge their boss has hired blocked by a fallen tree their coach driver refuses to take the other route, through the forest. The team elect to leave their vehicle and walk the short distance to their retreat. When they arrive at the lodge it doesn't look like the high-class establishment they were expecting. Arguments ensue about it being the right one but the security and warmth of four walls wins out and they decide to stay the night.
The next morning their nightmare begins when one of their band gets their leg caught in a bear trap and the group also sense that they are not alone, someone is out there… watching them.
There are some very good touches to Severance… a scene following the line 'I bet this is going to hurt' and the use of a rocket launcher both had me laughing out loud, as did a scene with Danny Dyer where he is leaning against a tree and something hits him in the face! The complete absurdity of the scene makes it not only surreal but very funny, sadly there are not that many more scenes of this quality in the film.
Overall though the film just doesn't hit its targets 90% of the time, it takes way too long to actually get going and the overall reasoning either isn't explained well enough or just doesn't make any sense at all. The copying of a scene last seen in Hostel and the back-stories to the lodge they make up at dinner are just so clichéd that they are just annoying and completely pointless padding as far as I was concerned. I was also very annoyed by a scene near the beginning with Steve that managed to ruin a later surprise, or what should have been a surprise anyway. Seeing as this was written and directed by Christopher Smith who's last film was the much derided 'The Creep' I guess I shouldn't have expected too much from this. The trailer and the recent excellence of the other Brit films of this ilk may make this seem worse than it actually is, I don't think so though, it just didn't scare me, make me laugh or even invest enough in the characters for me to care whether they lived or died.. It had potential but just doesn't really have a script to fulfil it. The main problem for me was that it didn't really know what it wanted to be, or didn't really focus enough on the any of the genres to excel at any of them.
The best way I can explain the awfulness of this is that I went with a couple of mates who thought it was as awful as I did. In fact we thought we had wasted an afternoon and my mates main comment afterwards was along the lines of… 'I'm so glad we didn't have to pay to see that!'
Pictures of Severance (DVD)
The holidaying staff
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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)
![Severance [DVD] [2006]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78191431.jpg "Severance [DVD] [2006]")
Nov 22nd, 2006
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