Severance

Starring: Danny Dyer, Laura Harris, Tim McInnerny, Toby Stephens, Claudie Blakley, Andy Nyman, Babou Ceesay, David Gilliam

Written by: James Moran and Christopher Smith

Directed by: Christopher Smith

Distributor: Magnolia Pictures

Rated: R



Yes, I’m an American. Much of my clothing was made by impoverished hands in some third world nation. Every now and then, for the sake of convenience, I eat a fast food meal that is the end-product of a million kinds of human suffering. In spite of my crass nature as a guilty American consumer, I am still sensitive enough to laugh when I see some middle management jerk from a vicious defense contractor get decapitated on screen. It’s not exactly a masterpiece of British cinema, but as horror comedies go, Christopher Smith’s Severance is appallingly entertaining with a gruesome aesthetic and a delightfully twisted sense of political humor.

The story follows a group of white-collar employees from the sales division of a multinational defense contractor to the mountains of Eastern Europe for a team-building weekend. All seems to be going well on the way there when manager Richard (Tim McInnerny) gets into a hopeless argument with the bus driver. The driver soon abandons the group, leaving them to make it the rest of the way to the secluded resort on foot where they find themselves walking straight into a dangerous place filled with mysterious strangers who all seem to want them dead.

If this doesn’t sound particularly high brow, that’s because it isn’t. What makes Severance memorable is that it takes itself seriously both as a comedy and a horror film. Christopher Smith draws all the characters sympathetically enough that we identify with them while simultaneously being hateful enough that we don’t mind seeing them viscously murdered one by one. Rather than making the blood and dismemberment surreal and exaggerated, Smith finds humor in the reality of it all. During a paintball expedition, a man in the group steps in a bear trap and loses one of his legs from the knee down. This wouldn’t be comedy if it didn’t play out with a degree of realism. The scene is funny because the pain is rendered so effectively that all we can do on the other side of the cinema screen is laugh.

The socio-political humor aspect is actually quite clever. In a particularly intelligent bit, a salesman for the company unleashes a high-tech rocket launcher on the low-tech guerilla attackers, only to find that the rocket has chosen what it considers to be a more appropriate target. In another scene, one of the group members identifies the exact model of landmine he’s inadvertently stepped on. He’s about to become a victim of a product made by his own company, one that his office is in charge of selling. Events can seem a little exaggerated toward the end, but there are enough clever moments leading up to the closing credits to make it register as a solid, non-confrontational reminder of how profoundly messed up the world is. VS