Review by: Eric R. Lowther
Posted by: Root Rot
Severance (2006)
Written by: James Moran & Christopher Smith
Directed by: James Moran
Hey kids, it’s Eric R Lowther aka biguglyhairyscary dropping by ye olde Witch’s Hat once again to bring you 2006’s “Severance” starring Danny Dyer, Laura Harris and Tim McInnerny. We’ve all seen more versions of the “psycho killer in the woods” than we can shake a stick caked with eye gore at, but I’m happy to say my long run of reviewing movies that blow turtles has finally hit a brighter spot with this one.
Synopsis;
A marketing team for the Palisades Defense company, a big-time weapons manufacturer, has been sent to a luxury resort in Eastern Europe as both a team-building exercise and a reward for their recent successes. It’s obvious right from the opening scenes of the bus ride to the resort that our group is showing the stress of their recent success. Nerves are frazzled and the various members of the team’s little personality ticks and raw spots are coming out and have started grating on each other. It doesn’t help these Brits (plus one American member of the team, Maggie, played by the much-underrated Laura Harris) that their bus driver doesn’t speak a word of English. To further complicate things, he becomes so stymied at a tree in the road of his mapped route that he drops them all off in the middle of nowhere in a hail of Slavic cursing rather than trust the leader of the team, Richard, and his dubious map-reading skills to take a different route through the deep woods. We can already see disasters approaching in the form of odd animal sounds from the foreign woods around them and in the goofball of the group, Steve (Danny Dyer in a great yet reserved comedic performance), and his need to be as high as possible for the duration of the team-building weekend.
With nothing left to do, the group decides to try and find the resort on foot which, according to Richard’s pioneering skills, is only a mile or so down a dirt road. Of course it’s much more than that, and when the group does arrive they find not the sprawling, 5-star luxury resort promised them but rather a very quaint yet large and rough-looking hunting lodge. Richard tries to convince everyone that they are, indeed, in the right place and not a victim of his poor map skills and further claims Palisade sent them to this dilapidated lodge on purpose as another facet of their team-building weekend, forcing them to “rough it” while learning reliance on each other. Almost from the moment they set foot in the lodge, weird things start happening around them. Glimpses of a strange man in a balaclava start popping up while others experience odd dreams and other disturbing events.
Hey kids, fun fact; despite the quality of the production there are more than a couple of continuity errors that pop up in the production, such as a scene where a character’s leg is stuck in a bear trap but the trapped leg keeps changing from left to right as the camera cuts to reaction shots of the others. This one would almost have to be intentional, but there are others that I think would be considered less so. See how many you can spot.
Eventually, one of the team finds a stack of files in the basement pointing to the place’s former identity being an asylum for the mentally insane, leading to a few great imagined sequences of what the lodge had been like in its heyday. But it’s Jill, a designer of “humane weapons systems” for Palisades that finally coughs up the proper nugget of company history. The lodge had once been an asylum of sorts, a place where the government placed their soldiers that had gone too far over the line and had taken killing from occupation to lifestyle back in the 1990’s. While Palisade had nothing to do with the asylum itself, it had come in and used nerve agents to quell a patient riot at government request, killing most of the inmates in the process. A company legend sprung up around the event and claimed there was a survivor of the toxic cleansing, and that the sociopathic, well-trained soldier vowed to kill any Palisade employee that ever dared show themselves at the site again.
You can probably see where this is going from here, but it does throw in a few surprises as well as some good kills. The characters are very well-done here, and the acting is top-notch. Most of the principals in the cast have very long and varied pedigrees, especially with our leads. I love Dyer in just about everything I’ve ever seen him in, especially the infected zombie tale “Doghouse”, and Laura Harris, who as a member of the cast of “Dead Like Me” (one of my all-time favorite shows ever) will always hold a place of esteem. In fact, most of the cast have huge lists of credits stretching back into the 90’s in many cases, and their seasoning and experience really brings what could’ve been a humdrum genre project to the next level. The writing is tight and the direction keeps the pace and energy up to the point there really isn’t a slow or meaningless spot anywhere in the movie. The entire production runs along at a steady pace, fast enough to keep your attention yet not so fast that the thing ends up losing you in its own cleverness. And rest assured there’s quite a bit of cleverness in which to get lost here. The plot twists don’t feel like “twists” at all, and when they’re revealed you’re more likely to face palm because you failed to make the connection than you are to feel like the movie fooled you off-screen. The effects are used sparingly but are of high quality and are placed just right to move the story and even the score and music are well-suited.
So, is it any good? First and foremost, this is Brit humor. If you can’t stand that at all, this won’t be a good choice for you. It’s not as dry as some other examples, and if you enjoyed Doghouse or are a Dr. Who or Black Adder fan you’ll not only see a few familiar faces here but will really enjoy the style of this one. The whole humor of the movie is less “dry wit” and much more of the “laid-back situational” variety. You won’t get Benny Hill, but you won’t get Mr. Bean, either. It’s a great mix of the dark humor, suspense, action and slasher genres and takes itself just seriously enough to keep you engaged in the story, even when it dips into lampooning the corporate world. If this sounds like your kind of flix, you can get it from Amazon or your usual online outlets for anywhere from $7-$14, with Amazon also offering digital copies to either stream or purchase. You can also get it through Netflix though it won’t be available for streaming after 5/31/11. I can fully recommend this one to Brit humor lovers out there, and feel confident that most of the rest of you will find something to like about it as well.
That’s a wrap for me. Make sure you’re filling your earholes with all the Witch’s Hat podcast goodness we have floating around out there. And while you’re at it, stop by our forums over at Killer Reviews and talk about any damn thing you please. So with a tip of my imaginary hat to Keely, Root, Grey, Misfit Boy and all the rest, this has been biguglyhairyscary saying, see ya, kids.
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