Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Severance (2007)

Somehow, the smugly righteous air that infects the first half hour or so of this British bucket of crap, coupled with the corporate-retreat plotline and the filmmakers' oh-so-clever designation of said corporation as a manufacturer of military weapons have led this to be typified as savage satire of a sort. It's not -- the obvious, broadly painted leftist leanings are a distraction, not a way of thinking. Writer/director Christopher Smith and his co-writer James Moran have pasted such sympathies on here as bait for the overanalytical, the idea being that if a prospective audience member is fooled by its status as a film-fest journeyman and its lip service towards Redeeming Value, they won't notice that they've lost ninety minutes of their life to yet another obnoxious, formulaic slasher comedy that's not as funny or gruesome as it thinks it is. But that's only part of the problem: Loathsome shithead characters, lousy acting and embarrassingly clumsy attempts at veddy-British irony only make this stupid thing even more wretched than it would have been as a mere satiric shell game.

Grade: D

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