Severance

Gory, funny and frightening. The premise isn't that original, but the execution is mighty good and it succeeds in making you actually care for the characters. Well worth the watch!

I didn't like it much. It's not nearly as clever or funny as it thinks it is, and the horror violence seems disturbing and mean-spirited instead of mocking and over-the-top. The dialogue really isn't that sharp at all, and the characters are either incredibly unlikeable or just plain bland. There's only a few minutes of side-splitting humour (the rocket/plane being the highlight), and there's some moments of sly comic brilliance (loved the three different stories told), but it just turns into the very thing it's trying to mock by the end. The villains are too real and too human to be properly made fun of, and thus any joke involving them just falls flat. It's not nearly funny enough to be labeled a hybrid, so instead it's just a horror with some black comedy elements. Shame.

Co-writer and director Christopher Smith puts a rather fresh and funny spin on the standard slasher formula with this irreverent horror comedy. The employees of a multinational weapons manufacturer named Palisade travel to the Eastern European woods for a "team building" retreat. They get on each others' nerves for a while, but this will not turn out to be their biggest worry. What happens is that a very stealthy and extremely sadistic killer is going to target them, and arrange for them to meet nasty ends.

Give Smith and his co-writer James Moran some credit for playing around with the conventions of slasher cinema without resorting to self-referential dialogue. The set-up is certainly a topical one, and the filmmakers do work in digs at corporate culture as well as this genre. The characters may grate on the nerves of some viewers. "Severance" does fall into that familiar trap of "dumb people doing dumb things", but at least not all of the characters are hopeless. Laura Harris plays Maggie as a resilient person who keeps a cool head in an emergency.

Genre lovers will be pleased with a respectable amount of splatter, and it must be said that these particular woods - "Severance" was filmed in Hungary and The Isle of Man - possess some decent atmosphere. The performances are generally capable. Danny Dyer is the principal supplier of comedy relief as the immature Steve. Toby Stephens is fun in the role of Harris. The filmmakers also work in a brief and very amusing way to contrive some nudity.

Ultimately, this is rather predictable and the ending isn't all that great, but this is still pretty enjoyable while it lasts.

Seven out of 10.

A team-building weekend in the mountains of Eastern Europe goes horribly wrong for the sales division of the multi-national weapons company Palisade Defence when they become the victims of a group of crazed killers who will stop at nothing to see them dead.

I recall this film coming out in 2006 and getting a lot of positive buzz from horror fans. For one reason or another, I never ended up watching it until now (March 2013). And I must say, the buzz was probably correct -- while not among the best horror films out there, it sure is well above average.

The trick of this film is that it is a horror film, but only in its feeling. Terrorists, a bus flipping over, guns and bombs... that is an action film. This should be an action comedy. But the style is definitely in the horror vein, with the way certain things are presented (particularly the bear trap). What makes a horror film a horror film? That question has been asked many times, and I think this film definitely makes you wonder.

Although many of the references were lost on me, I now know (from looking into the production) that many of the scenes were evoking Kubrick ("2001", "Strangelove" and "Clockwork Orange") and other notable directors. I love it. I love the subtlety of these homages... the "Clockwork" scene was clear to me, but I also am probably most familiar with that Kubrick film (although I have seen them all at least once).

I would need to see this again to fully review it, but my initial impression is that it is a great blend of action, humor and horror. Well worth a look.

I'm quite surprised that this movie hasn't done better as I thought it had hit written all over it. This film has only been out for two weeks here in Scotland and it already only has one showing at 10.25 at night and the screen that we were in only had around 15 people in it. Shame that, as this movie is brilliant entertainment.

It starts out with pretty funny moments but gets very violent and gory after a while. This is what I found a bit confusing with the film as I found myself not sure whether to laugh at some parts or not (the part with the guys leg being the main example).

However I did enjoy it though and some parts, especially the ending are very exciting. The plot is pretty clever and the characters are likable. All in all if you can handle the violence then this is a movie worth catching. Shame it's not getting the same recognition as Shaun Of The Dead.