A rainy Monday morning the wife on a hospital appointment and not much on the TV so I went YouTube looking for a film and came up with Severance starring Danny Dyer.
Severance is a British horror about a group of employees from Palisade Defence’s a high-profile international-arms supplier on a corporate team-building retreat somewhere in an Eastern European forest. The trip takes a turn for the worst when a deadly enemy infiltrates the retreat with the singular goal of ensuring that no one gets out alive.
It is a rare quality for a horror-comedy: the horror is unsettling and the comedy is genuinely funny, and both exist cheek by jowl without the balance ever tipping too far on either side.
A tree interrupts the coach journey that is across the road and when the driver refuses to drive along a woodland track, the group decide to walk to the lodge. They find a rundown "lodge", where the boss Richard (Tim McInnerny) decides that despite the smelly, deserted and basically ominous appearance of the venue that the show must go on, and plans out the following day's activities.
During the night they "sit around spouting scary stories", each of the stories somehow provides a reason as to why someone might hate their company. The brilliant scene where the characters discuss the history of the lodge. Harris (Toby Stephens), says it was a mental institution where the patients took over and Palisade were sent in to restore order, Jill (Claudia Blakley) says that it housed war criminals who held a vendetta against Palisade for arming their enemies. While Steve (Danny Dyer) says that it was a sanatorium for the elderly run by a sexy female nursing staff all stockings and push up bras.
They find a pie and believing it was left for them some tuck in for a nosh. That is until one of the group finds a human tooth in his share of the pie. And after questioning it is revealed the pie was "found" and simply heated up.
The next day Richard sends two of the group to seek contact with the outside world, the rest of them head off to play good old team building paintball. The two seeking help find the coach and the driver killed, so rush back to the others in the coach. Meanwhile, at the paintball, one of the team Gordon (Andy Nyman) steps into a bear trap and has his leg cut off nasty but there is a fun side to this with Steve trying to jam the severed leg into the small coach fridge.
They all board the coach the make a dash for safety realising something was wrong here but they crash hitting spikes scattered over the road. The driver Harris (Toby Stephens) earlier was joking about what happens if your head were cut off making out your head would stay alive for a few seconds. Of course, we all know what happens next.
Another very disturbing part is where one of the team Jill (Claudie Blakley) dazed and wonders off and is captured. She tied to a tree and gets petrol poured all over the body and finally is burned to a crisp with a flamethrower.
The remaining group manger to get back into the lodge and lock themselves in only Maggie, Billy, Richard, Gordon, and Steve are left. While Maggie and Steve are sharing a cigarette, one of the stranger comes in and takes away Gordon. The four look around the bowels of the lodge, following Gordon's screams as the stranger vivisects him. Lovely. They find the stranger, who puts a shotgun blast into Billy's chest. Billy finds he still able to fine-control his movements, even with the gaping hole in his chest, before he passes away.
Maggie, Richard, and Steve are left. Steve stays in the lodge; Maggie runs for the hills and is nearly raped, as does Richard. Of course, they are not together. Maggie returns to the lodge, Steve puts a long knife through one of the strangers, and Maggie gives him a shotgun blast through the head.
Maggie and Steve go outside the lodge, only to find that more strangers await them. Maggie drops one, but she is out of ammunition. They find Richard, who knows that he is standing on a mine. Richard distracts the strangers for a bit before he steps off the mine killing himself.
Maggie and Steve who have left the lodge are being chased find George, the corporate CEO, who is at the real lodge have a whale of a time partying with two hookers Steve had ordered at the start of the film. Steve and Maggie explains to George who grabs a missile launcher goes outside and fires at the strangers gathered at the edge of the field. Problem is the missile is a surface to air missile and when fired locks on to a passing jet liner, bang.
Everybody runs including the two hookers/escorts who fall into a large trap in the ground in the woods and strip to try and make a rope to pull themselves out . George meets a nasty end hanging from a tree. Maggie is caught but gets the better of her attacker while Steve takes out two of the attackers, but is badly wounded in the process. He helps the two women out of the hole.
While looking for a way to get help, Maggie sees a lot of Palisade ordinance. She telephones for assistance, but the stranger with the flamethrower who killed Jill catches up with her. The women with Steve find her before she is hacked to death. The foursome makes it to the lake and presumably to freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment