|
 everance"
is the latest from British horror hope Christopher
Smith, who had a hit in 2004 with his excellent
tube-bound chiller "Creep".
Here, Smith tackles something a little more
ambitious, attempting to work in satirical humour
and even social commentary amongst the ever rising
corpse count. Of course, comedy and horror are not
necessarily the best of bedfellows, though Smith
largely manages to avoid the pitfalls of the genre
and produces something which is both amusing,
frequently in a surprisingly sophisticated manner,
and thrilling, packing a real visceral punch.
The plot is a prime set up
for woodsy slaughter, following a busload of
workers for multi-national weapons company
Palisade Defence who go on a team building
exercise in the wilds of
Hungary
. Unfortunately, they are diverted en route to
their lodgings by a mysterious roadblock, and the
usual bickering and one-upmanship soon gives way
to a desperate struggle for survival as they are
hunted down and killed by mysterious assailants.
"Severance" is a
genuinely funny film, with humour in the vein of
the much-lauded BBC comedy "The Office"
and the 2004 hit "Shaun
of the Dead". As such, most of the laughs
come from well observed idiosyncrasies of the
workplace and the British people in general.
Thankfully, although the film is populated with
fairly broad stereotypes, such as the useless
manager (played in hilarious fashion by
"Blackadder" veteran Tim McInnerny), the
office geek and the drug taking cockney wide boy,
Smith pokes fun at them gently, rather than
exploiting them for mean spirited slapstick. As
the film progresses, the characters react quite
realistically to the nightmarish situation, and as
a result the viewer actually comes to care about
what happens to them.
Smith also runs a nice line
in satire, mainly in the form of laughs at the
expense of the American 'war on terror', including
one real side splitter towards the end which is
easily one of the funniest scenes in years.
Coupled with the fact that the characters work for
an arms company, this gives this film a nicely
cynical edge and provides a level of depth usually
unseen in comedy horrors, which are usually
content to focus on lowest common denominator
gross out gags.
After a vicious opening
scene, "Severance" takes a while to get
to the horror, and it is not until the second half
of the film that the bodies begin to pile up, with
Smith quite patiently building up a feeling of
unease. However, once the blood starts to flow the
film rarely lets up, and there are a good number
of gruesome set pieces. Wisely, Smith lets the
humour take a back seat from this point onwards,
and the film becomes an intense tale of survival
horror in the best tradition, with the characters
not only facing a multiple weapon wielding maniac
but a forest filled with a series of unpleasant
traps.
Smith certainly knows the
conventions of the genre, and frequently plays on
them to subvert viewer expectations. Whilst some
of these are a little clumsy, such as a dream
sequence quite obviously inserted for a cheap
shock, most of them work quite well, and give the
film a refreshingly innovative feel, including a
flashback imagined in the style of a black and
white silent film, complete with title cards.
These certainly help to keep even the most jaded
genre fan on their toes, and help to breathe new
life into the time old woodland slaughter
scenario.
Unfortunately,
"Severance" is unlikely to have the same
kind of mass-appeal enjoyed by "Shaun of the
Dead", mainly due to the fact that the
cynical laughs are matched evenly with some
genuinely vicious moments that plant the film
firmly in the horror genre. This is a shame, as
not only is it one of the best British horror
films in years, but one of the few from any
country which manages to mix mirth and murder so
effectively.
|
