SEVERANCE Season 1 (February 2022)

 

SEVERANCE Season 1

(February 2022)

“The numbers were scary…”

Severance* takes the idea of work/life balance to its chilling extreme, as we bear witness to the denizens of Lumon Industries’ “severed floor,” where the employees have elected to undergo a surgical process that effectively separates the work persona (who only becomes active and awake at work) from who the individual actually is in their home life.
Work memories are not accessible when the person is out of the office, and the work persona has no idea what their home life is like (are they married? Do they have kids?).
It’s the kind of scenario that a corporation will absolutely love (no pesky personal problems to interfere with productivity; industrial espionage… what’s that?) but isn’t necessarily beneficial to the employee.
As we see over Severance’s nine-episode season, hopefully only the first of many more…
 
“I trusted you, and you abused that trust.
“Your inefficiency and free range chicken roaming is ultimately your responsibility.
“Escort him… to the Break Room.”
 
It’s odd, going over the quotes I’ve gathered here.
You read them and some are so patently absurd that the overall effect is whimsy.
And while, yes, the absurdist office humor is indeed off-the-wall, it is also, in practice, disturbing.
There are shades of Twin Peaks here, not just in a visual sense, but in the way that the crackpot, occasionally non sequitur humor serves to mask the cold, inhuman horror that lies beneath the cheery, quirky facades.
 
A worker may suffer injurious pain or ghastly dehumanization, and no workspace is without its perils. But whatever your task, dear worker, see that you perform it with love. Endow in each swing of your axe or swipe of your pen the sum of your affections, that through me they may be purified and returned. No higher purpose may be found than this. Nor any higher love.
 
So join us at Lumon, where no one quite knows what it is they’re actually doing (even in the office!).
Spend the work days with a truly excellent cast that includes Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, and Christopher Walken!
Thrill to passages of The You You Are, by the one and only Dr. Ricken (Michael Chernus)!
And watch out for the MDE!
 
Our job is to taste free air. Your so-called “Boss” may own the clock that taunts you from the wall, but my friends, the hour is yours.
 
Severance: A damning indictment of corporate culture, with all its perks and incentivizations and sudden terminations.
It’s a world where the terms “Break Room” and “overtime” are positively chilling to hear.
 
“Let’s burn this place to the ground.”
 
* Brought to us by an excellent team headed up by creator Dan Erickson, and Ben Stiller (yes, that Ben Stiller), who directed 2/3 of the season.
 
(Severance key art courtesy of impawards.com.)

THE COTTAGE
(Review)

Paired up with mottephobic Peter (The League of Gentlemen’s Reece Shearsmith), David (Andy Serkis) finds himself in the middle of a raging storm of ineptitude as a criminal get-rich-quick scheme goes terribly awry in Paul Andrew Williams’ horror/comedy, The Cottage.
Now, as I’ve mentioned ‘round these parts before, horror/comedies are a tricky bunch, as both aspects—usually regarded as disparate—have to harmonize properly for the work as a whole to succeed.
Sadly, in The Cottage’s case, it’s in the comedy where things get wonky.


The humour in Williams’ script is brutally laboured and distinctly unfunny, and the decision to introduce the horror elements of the narrative rather late in the game puts even more pressure on an aspect of the film that’s already a hobbled mess.
It doesn’t help that Peter comes off as a horribly annoying, spineless twat, which isn’t so much Shearsmith’s fault, but rather that this is what the role asks of him.
It’s to Serkis’ credit that The Cottage is even remotely watchable, as he brings a brooding air to the ‘ard c*nt that David is.
And in those all-too-brief moments when he brings genuine emotion and a welcome humanity to David, Serkis emerges as the indispensable cog that keeps the film’s sputtering engine running.
As for the horror elements, they range from familiar (the threat) to commendable (the gruesome gore and splatter; watch out for that nasty bit of spadework).


What’s all the more curious about this is that The Cottage is Williams’ follow-up to his critically-acclaimed feature debut, London to Brighton.
It’s odd that London to Brighton seemed a much more assured and effective piece. And while the script for The Cottage was reportedly written years ago, even before London to Brighton, I’d like to think Williams would have done some revisions on it before finally bringing it before the cameras.
As it is, The Cottage doesn’t really work very well, and if you’re on the hunt for a British horror/comedy that does its job (and really, who isn’t?), you’d be better served to turn to Christopher Smith’s Severance (review in Archive) or Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (where, incidentally, Shearsmith also appears).
But if you’re a Serkis fan, or can endure lame humour for some brief, bloody bits, then by all means, have at it.
There’s a lot worse out there than what’s in The Cottage.

Parting shot: Hellraiser fans should also note, there’s a Doug Bradley cameo in this, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty negligible. (And please note, it isn’t Mr. Bradley’s fault, either.)

(The Cottage UK quad and images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

SEVERANCE (Review)

For anyone who’s ever thought that team building seminars are a load of bollocks, well, Severance is the film for you.
Directed by Christopher Smith (who helmed the Franka Potente-starrer, Creep), Severance follows a group of Palisade Defence employees, taking a break from a tour of Eastern Europe for a team building weekend in a luxury lodge up in the mountains. Things don’t go quite as planned, of course, and much horror and hilarity ensue.

Horror/comedy mash-ups are always a tricky thing; sometimes the horror is tepid, or the comedy lame. The worst cases are when neither part of the equation works.
There are however, the exceptions, when the production captures just the right mix and leaves us with a classic: John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London; Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever; Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead; James Gunn’s Slither; John Gulager's Feast.
Now you can add Severance to that list.

Lotta funnies here, as the film mines whatever is handy for its potential comedic value: sight gags, points of view, grindhouse conventions, even breaking the fourth wall.
Smith and company then display a canny understanding of comedy, by knowing the value of experiencing the anticipation of a funny, then having the pay-off be the consequence of the funny, without actually showing the audience the funny. (Down that verboten road lies physical comedy and slapstick.)
The funnies are then balanced against the more horrific aspects of the narrative as the machetes and bear traps are pulled out with a splatter flourish.
So effective is the melding that in one memorable sequence, we go from mild amusement to wince-inducing horror on the turn of a dime.

Additionally, what makes Severance even more enjoyable are the performances.
While the characters are borderline stereotype, the actors bring a welcome level of honesty and heart to the table that brings these characters to life (at least until the time comes for them to die).
So, while you may have seen the likes of Richard, the ineffectual boss (Blackadder’s Tim McInnerny, also recognizable to the kiddie congregation as Alonzo, Cruella’s butler from the Dalmatians movies), Gordon, the enthusiastic over-achiever (Andy Nyman), or Steve, the off-his-tits-on-`shrooms under-achiever (Danny Dyer, from Justin Kerrigan’s Human Traffic) before, the actors nevertheless leave an impression, and make the proceedings all the more entertaining.
And yes, I use the words “enjoyable” and “entertaining” to describe a film which has people fleeing through the woods screaming for their lives.

Certainly a sight better than Smith’s previous effort, Creep (which was little more than ho-hum horror we’d all seen before), Severance is an effective exercise in getting us to scream our fool bloody heads off while we stifle the mad giggles. There is even a subtextual swipe against the military and weapons manufacturers that may give one pause in between the shrieks and guffaws. (And in today’s post-9/11 world, you can’t go wrong with that.)

Parting shot: Severance opened last year in Ireland and the United Kingdom on August 25, just two weeks after Wilderness, a film with which it shares a couple of similarities in regards to situation and methods of dispatch. Ultimately though, the films are different entities, and though I may have enjoyed Severance more, Wilderness is still an effective shocker that could be your thing, if straight-up horror is more to your tastes. (Wilderness reviewed here: Archive March 2007.)

(Severance OS courtesy of truemovie.com.)