Séminaire

Wow, the Swedes make some fun horror films! This is a slasher based at a work retreat, a conference, for a company no one would want to work for; complete with psychotic boss, his adoring female sidekick, sycophantic employee and all the subjugated employees expected.

The dubbing isn't great, but wasn't really an issue for me. The acting was decent, especially for a horror film. The killer was fun, although no great mystery.

The real fun was the banter between characters and the suppressed feelings that came out for some at the end. You could really feel the angst and peer pressure these kind of work dynamics bring out between colleagues.

The ending was satisfying and the action was well paced, somewhat brutal and even funny at times ( I almost feel guilty for saying brutal and funny in the same sentence, but doesn't that add something in a genre film?).

Overall a fun little film for those who like slashers. A nice addition to the genre.

Ever noticed how, in horror films, co-workers are always portrayed as loathsome and egocentric people that passionately hate each other? And especially when they're away on a retreat or team-building activity together? I think screenwriters do this deliberately to show "ordinary" people who work in offices and watch horror movies to relax - like me - that we don't have to complain about our own colleagues, after all.

The Swedish "Konferensen" is very similar to the British "Severance". In both films, fellow office workers, who can't stand each other, are taken out of their comfort zones to participate, very much against their will, in forced team-building activities somewhere in a remote location. The films also have in common they are both very light-hearted slashers without too much significance, but very entertaining, nevertheless.

In "Konferensen" we have the administrative employees and project-developers of a rural municipality who are obliged to spend a few days in a sort of boot camp, and at the same time celebrate their great recent achievement; - namely the building of a large shopping center on the grounds where a large, expropriated farm used to be. Lina, who has been absent for a few months due to a burnout, discovers that the over-ambitious Jonas has been falsifying permits and cheating landowners. There is also talk of leases for the new shopping center that don't seem to exist, such as IKEA. Can you imagine a shopping zone in Sweden without an IKEA?

When referring to farmers who were forcibly expropriated, you also know that you don't have to guess long for the identity of the bloodthirsty killer who soon starts butchering the participants one by one, whilst putting on the idiotic mask of the project mascot. It is also not the intention or ambition of writer/director Patrik Eklund to bring forward an original and incredibly intelligent horror film. He clearly just had a pitch-black comedy with a lot of blood, creative kills, and a bit of suspense in mind. He succeeds with "Konferensen".

Yet another masked killer horror. What with the recent ok-ish Totally Killer, and the upcoming Eli Roth directed Thanksgiving, they seem to be all the rage . . . . again! The Conference takes the Totally Killer route with it being a comedy too, however the tone switch between comedy and horror is handled better here, and isn't as jarring. This is chock full of the usual horror tropes, with a group of people, some you hope survive, some you hope meet a grizzly end and of course when the killer strikes, the deaths are wonderfully gruesome. This is a fun Swedish horror that should rocket to the top of the Netflix Top 10 list.

The Conference is polluted with a cast of deeply unlikable characters who get exactly what is coming to them. Though not without subtlety (a few of the good people are sacrificed along the way) this is essentially a satisfying vengeance film for people who hate corporate shills and the jerks who are destroying the environment.

The violence is genuinely disturbing so I wouldn't recommend this as a light watch if you're in the mood to just laugh, but there are a few undeniably hilarious scenes. Konferensen is primarily driven by a lot of schadenfreude.

This is also one of those flicks where you can somewhat sympathize with the killer even though they're completely out of line by the end.

You're probably going to see 'The Conference' described as a comedy/horror. I'm not sure I would describe it that way. There are a lot of quirky characters doing some odd things but it never really felt like a film that was trying to make me laugh. The tone was pretty serious for the most part.

I'm a sucker for a masked killer. The mask here was good, although perhaps a little similar to the one in 'Happy Death Day'. The killer proves himself early on to not be playing around. He is out for blood and he will get it in some pretty violent and often creative fashion.

I think this is a film where the lower your expectations are, the better time you are going to have. Is it a horror masterpiece? No. Is it a reasonably fun time and a good film to watch on Friday the 13th (its release date)? Sure. There are some fun kills and some decent moments of tension here and there. 5.5/10.