The Employer

If you want to listen to some interesting interview questions probably discarded by Google and Amazon HR professionals, then Malcolm McDowell is your man. He is always entertaining, but the writing here is a bit uneven, so he repeats himself a lot in this film.

This a very rare miss by David Dastmalchian, who is the best actor of his generation. But he can only play the cards he is dealt with; and those cards in this script are limited.

This scenario has already been done with Cube, and vaguely similar to Saw, but without the newness of the situation in Cube. I like Zane's performance as well, but it was cut short (no pun intended). The film is actually fairly predictable, and for that reason, I had to give it a 5.

Why does Malcolm McDowell keep doing these bad movies playing a cheesy cliché villain? He has acting chops and could do so much better. Most of the other actors are mediocre at best.

This movie is like a bad play with five actors stuck in one scene. This has been done so many times before and it has been proved to require outstanding talent to pull it off. The premise of this movie is just ridiculous. Even the special gore effects look really fake like a joke horror film. All I enjoyed in this movie was the good looks and body of Katerina Mikailenko.

This movie is the epitome of the idiotic Republican thinking (ruthless amoral selfish philosophy, and corporate scamming masquerading as "Capitalism") which has ruined this country. I just hope that its message was ridiculing and not extolling.

This is the kind of movie I usually do not like. All the action in a closed frame, only dialogue, right, there are also four crimes, boring. But, the quality of the actors' play, I mean the five job candidates, all very natural, they pick up the film. Plus, Malcolm McDowell, "deadly serious" and very special talented. It is a little slow and predictable, even hard to believe that Keith Caverns (Michael DeLorenzo) can strangle with a tie the giant Mike Drake (Matthew Willig) or that Billie Lewis then kills Keith Caverns with her shoe heel. Except that, everything is like in life, I have seen with my own eyes such characters, in real life, in different working places, capable of anything for a job.

Another story about a group of strangers locked together in an enclosed space, hoping for a way out. In here, these five are job applicants; in the last step to join a powerful corporation, only one can leave the room with the job... and their life.

I really like this kind of film; it is always such a psychologically heavy concept, often accompanied by interesting twists and thought- provoking mindgames...

Unfortunately, 'The Employer' fails in that aspect.

The movie is too short and moves too fast to create the necessary tension in the room scenes, and the characters/actors are so bad they are unable to create any interest in the viewer. And it is far from just the actors' faults (though they have their share on it): the characters are horribly conceived and developed, their actions not making sense and being overly ruthless/psychopathic to the point of being unbelievable/almost cartoonish.

This makes the twists almost pointless and their impact almost nonexistent. The psychological aspect the film needed ends forgotten and ignored.

Malcolm McDowell is the only one to do a good job, and his character is quite fun to watch (though equally bad). A sharp contrast to the otherwise terribleness.

In the end, this film is far too moronic and badly made. It can't even pass as a idiotic, semi-gory thriller, as the anti-capitalistic stance the film seems to defend (considering the way they portray the big corporations) show they tried to make this have some kind of half-assed message. In other words, they actually believed this could be good.

I give it a 4 just because I love this concept, which made me try to like it, but in the end it could very well receive a lower rating. Much better choices would be 'Exam', 'La habitación de Fermat', and even the 'Cube' franchise.

I've seen so many of these types of movies. Cube (also has 2 sequels) was one of the earlier good ones (where random people are stuck in various adjoining rooms with "puzzles to solve"). A more recent one that is better than Employer is Exam (2009) - rated 6.8 and with many great twists. Other similar movies involving people killing each other off in a "room" include: Devil 6.3 (2010) - people stuck in an elevator, The Killing Room 5.7(2009) - people in an scientific experiment, Unknown 6.5 (2006) - people stuck in a warehouse, Fermat's Room 6.6 (2007 - foreign language) - 4 mathematicians in a rm, The Method 7.3 (2005 - foreign language) - interview process Overall Cube (the first one) wins with 7.4 rating and oddly enough being the oldest (1997). Enjoy these movies if you like the genre.