Day Nineteen: Severance (2007)
The tedium and hypocrisy of office work is ripe for a smart horror film, but I’m afraid that Christopher Smith’s Severance is not that film. Severance is really just the same old slasher business, the old bit where nothing happens for two acts and we twiddle our thumbs and wait for the good stuff. We go to slasher films for rowdy ultra-violent perversity but the most perverse thing is usually how long we have to wait for the film to finally get on with it. We feel that time is being killed, and that if the director had made the film he really wanted, it would have been about twenty five minutes long.
Severance’s first couple acts do include a few nice barbs, but the film’s set up is really about as primitive as any other slasher movie. We have the goof ball, the sexy girl, the nerd, the clueless boss, and none of them are allowed too much personality. In the hands of a virtuoso (Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) this can be effective, but usually it winds up being about as hypocritical as anything Severance pretends to be lampooning.
To Smith’s credit, the third act here is pretty good. There is a truly wow moment featuring a rocket launcher, and a couple of the hack and slash scenes with the villians (a pack of possibly deranged soldiers freshly escaped from a loony bin) deliver the goods. But deep down you really don’t give a shit, and this wait until the third act structure (that’s probably a mutant of the structure of better movies such as Psycho or the original Chainsaw) needs to be retired or saved for the pros. Remember that film we discussed a few weeks ago, The Descent ? That film employed a similar wait and see peekaboo structure, ONLY THE FIRST TWO ACTS BOTHERED TO BE A REAL MOVIE TOO.
October 19th, 2007 at 8:05 am
I was initially curious about this one but steered clear. It’s English and kind of a satire, right? It felt like it was capitalizing on Shaun of the Dead to me with the slasher genre intead of zombies. Maybe that’s unfair, but audiences are fickle, what can I say?
I don’t want to hijack this post by talking about a different movie just yet, so I’ll hold my thoughts on The Descent until later.
October 19th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Hijack away! Love to hear your thoughts…
October 19th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Thankfully, Severance doesn’t play like a Shaun wannabe. It’s more Southern Comfort with a slasher flavoring. The British comedy angle isn’t explored much.
October 19th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Not that there’s anything wrong with Shaun at all, to the contrary, but I think you see what I’m saying.
Anyway. The Descent. I liked it quite a bit. It managed to do what horror movies no longer tend to do for me: freaked my shit.
The opening was very unsettling…the sudden and unexpected shish-kebabing followed by the creepiness in the hospital with the lights.
And then it makes you wait. It could’ve been just an adventure film, but there’s this subtext creeping underneath with Sarah obviously still pretty freaked out and there are unspoken issues where her friend Juno. You think to yourself “Hey, wait a minute, now that I think about it, before the original accident everyone was giving each other strange looks…”
At this point, I admire that we’re given some time to get to know these girls, but I wish there was a little better job of character development. Nothing too fancy, I’m not talking about European arthouse stuff, just give me a little more of a rooting interest so it hurts a little more for each one who isn’t going to make it out of the cave alive. Still, I have to say you got a lot more of that than you often get.
Once the fun starts, I do have one minor beef in that they fell back on the “hightened suspense, false-alarm, relax, ZING!” trick too often. Completely forgiveable because otherwise I was having a lot of fun, but it’s one of those things where you can see the filmmakers pulling the strings and it bugs me a little. Still, it’s kind of a convention and I’d almost feel robbed if they didn’t do it. Just less often.
***Here there be spoilers if you haven’t seen the movie…seriously, like I’m about to totally blow the ending so now is your last chance to stop reading. I mean it. I’m not fucking around.***
I’ve gotta say that I liked everything BUT the ending. I wasn’t a huge fan of either one though I liked the longer ending best. Having Juno be in the SUV next to her (I loved the business with the oncoming truck by the way and I really thought for a minute they were going to clobber her) only makes sense if it’s a hallucination, just logistically speaking, so cutting it off at that point makes no sense to me and it just ignores all the other moments in the movie where she seemed to be imagining things.
The extended ending showing her back in the cave is the one I like best and I’ve warmed up to it quite a bit. Still, I’d have liked a little something extra…like showing Juno escape while Sarah remains trapped would’ve been unexpected and cool.
Anyway. Good stuff. 100% better than I ever would’ve expected if I hadn’t read your review.
October 19th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
The reason I like the American ending is because it implies that even though she got out of the cave, she’s still fucked.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
There’s a short, sweet, suddeness to the American version and it’s fun to end with a gotcha.