Severance
Starring: Danny Dyer, Laura Harris, Toby Stephens, Claudie Blakley. Tim McInnerny, David Gilliam, Juli Drajkó , Judit Viktor, and Sándor Boros
The posters for Severance proudly proclaim that it’s the funniest English horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead. Which is a bit like saying this is the nicest chip I’ve eaten since the last one, only without the pleasure of fried potato products.
A group of defence contractor employees on a staff outing take a wrong turn and discover, to their growing terror, that all is not as it seems. The lodge they’re staying in looks like an abbatoir, there are files in the basement that details hundreds of criminally psychotic individuals and the pie in the fridge? Not chicken. As they struggle to survive, it soon becomes clear that not everyone is going to make it out alive. It also, unfortunately, becomes clear that very few of you will care who lives and who dies.
If you’ve seen the trailer then you’ll have seen ninety five percent of the film’s best bits, it’s really that simple. This is a single joke stretched wafer thin and the first fifty minutes or so is amongst the most lumpen paced, badly written first halves of a horror movie I’ve ever seen. The whole point with movies like this is that they become rollercoaster rides, flat out sprints to the finish line filled with frantic battles for survival, unintentionally hilarious gore and shocks a plenty.
Instead the viewer is subjected to the sight of Danny Dyer, a man whose presence in a movie is increasingly becoming the equivalent of a DANGER! TEDIUM AHEAD! Sign on the poster getting stoned and seeing multiple versions of himself. To make matters worse, the rest of the cast seem as unhappy with their characters with the excellent Laura Harris looking progressively more depressed at what she’s having to say or do. Meanwhile Tim McInnerny and Toby Stephens struggle manfully with a script which tries to be The Office meets The Evil Dead and ends up being a thoroughly tedious and deeply unwelcome Hostel knockoff.
There are a couple of high points, to be fair, including a great gag with a heat seeking missile and the severed leg gag that was used, basically in its entirety, for the trailer but they’re just not enough. Severance is overlong, over pleased with itself and despite the best efforts of some of the cast members, just flat out lousy. The best English horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead?Try the onlyEnglish horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead and one which never comes close to the heights of its predecessor.
Alasdair started writing when he was nine, powered by a hefty diet of '80s cartoons, Doctor Who and Icepops. He's quite tired by this stage but has written a lot of things for a lot of people, including Fortean Times, Neo and Surreal.