Purely Joyful Movie!

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It is violent. It is horror. It is comedy. With that being said, I think it's comical when people complain that the movie is what it claims to be.'It makes fun of scary things.' Why yes, it's a dark comedy.'The villains are too real to be properly made fun of.' Are you discouraging a film for having realistic antagonists? Your opinion is officially invalid.'The characters weren't very thoroughly developed.' Most of them die almost immediately, and I guess you've never had a job before.'I don't think it's funny when people get hurt.' My advice to you is, "Don't watch dark comedies."Did I personally find the movie funny? Of course, I did. I was actually hoping we'd see a hooker thrown into a wood-chipper, because I like dark humor.Did I think it was too scary? The movie had deliberately misplaced tension to mock its audience for getting scared. I found this to be cheeky, and well done.What of the rating? I think it would be higher if not for audience members too embarrassed to admit a comedy scared them."Shaun of the Dead" was a brighter, happier film despite it, in fact, being dark comedy.The movie in question here, "Severance," is at times, uncomfortable to watch. This is not due to poor execution or even bad writing (*cough cough* Suicide Squad *cough cough*), the discomfort stems from slightly more believable subject matter. Terrorists carving up vacationers in the forest is far more believable than mummy dearest taking on a zombie. I enjoyed the array of emotions I felt watching this film. Apparently, a few other audience members prefer a more 2-dimensional "rom-com" with a few zombies.*Bonus points for a truly entertaining heroine. I identified with that blonde bitch from the moment I saw her.

Danny Dyer. The name conjures up images of some of the greatest films set to grace the big screen of all time. Yeah... right. His films (post 'The Business' and that one about football hooligans that was kind of similar to the one Frodo was in have hardly set the Box Office ablaze). However, somehow he still gets works. And for a good reason – no matter how bad his films get, we – the people – still seem to watch them.And that's just the bad ones! 'Severence' is actually pretty good. So, er, we have a group of people (including Mr Dyer) on a trip to somewhere remote (do you care?) where they get picked off one by one. Yeah, it's basically a 'slasher' movie only with white-collar office workers (if you can believe that Danny Dyer would ever be employed by any self respecting office) instead of dumb, blonde, American teenagers (although I should mention that one of Danny's co-workers is actually American and blonde – I wouldn't dare say 'dumb').So, if you've seen one slasher film then you've basically seen them all – including this. Just don't take it as an excuse not to indulge. Yes, it's nothing new, but it sure is fun. The dialogue is snappy and the characters fun to watch. And, if that's not enough, you have the gore. Again, for a low budget film with no stars (sorry, Danny – no offence, but you're hardly Tom Cruise) the gore is nicely done and pretty sick (special mention to a missing leg scene).And, if nothing else, there is possibly the most amusing use even of a rocket launcher (if not the sickest – technically) that even rivals the RPG fired in Chris Morris' 'Four Lions.' Don't expect a great movie with Oscar-worthy performances, or self-realising character arcs. Basically, if you like daft, cheesy slasher films then you should enjoy this. And if you also appreciate Danny Dyer's 'acting' abilities then you'll get double for your money.

Opening sequence: two young women and a middle-aged man are running for their lives. The women fall into a pit; the man gets snared in a trap. Does not turn out well for the man.Shift to the main narrative. Seven British employees of a company called Palisade Defence are on a company bus en route to a lodge for a team-building retreat. Their route is blocked; the local driver refuses to take a detour through some scary woods. So they walk a mile to the lodge.Palisade makes armaments. The group in the film does PR for Palisade. During their first meal together at the retreat, they recount imaginative stories of what the lodge served as in previous years. The candidates were: a pre-World War I mental hospital where the inmates imprisoned the physicians; military prison for Cold War assassins who liked killing too much; sex retreat for old men; a lodge for who knows what.Everyone in the group is touchy about something.The first night is stormy, and Jill sees a man in a mask out her window when she's dropping a spider outside. Everyone else thinks she's excitable. The next morning, Jill and Harris go to find better phone reception. The rest of the group goes in for paint ball as team building. Jill and Harris return with the company bus; they leave the dead driver behind. After the paint-ball, the idiot Gordon gets caught in a bear trap. When Billy opens the trap, Gordon just won't pull his leg out. Billy has to let go because the trap is so strong. This is repeated five times until Gordon's leg is severed. Clever.That was my definitive first jump the shark moment.They take the bus, but someone lays down a good two dozen caltrops. The bus gets more than one flat; how it flipped over is hard to see. That was the second jump the shark moment. Harris is caught under the weight of something; the man who has been observing them beheads him. Jill walks around, but the stranger shows up behind her.Maggie, Billy, Richard, Gordon, and Steve are left. The stranger had tied Jill up to a tree; he burns her alive. The survivors return to the lodge and lock themselves in.While Maggie and Steve are sharing a cigarette, 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's still able to fine-control his movements, even with the gaping hole in his chest, before he passes away. That was the third jump the shark moment.Maggie, Richard, and Steve are left. Steve stays in the lodge; Maggie runs for the hills, as does Richard. Of course, they are not together. Maggie returns to the lodge, hm. Steve puts a long knife through the stranger, 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's out of ammunition. They find Richard, who knows that he is standing on a mine. Richard distracts the strangers for a bit.Maggie and Steve find George, the corporate CEO, who is partying with two young women at the actual lodge where the team-building was supposed to be held. This brings us back to the opening sequence, where George meets his end. Maggie gets snared. She gets the better of the one who releases her. 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 flame thrower who killed Jill catches up with her. The women with Steve find her before she gets hacked to death. The foursome makes it to the lake and presumably to freedom.-----Scores-----Cinematography: 6/10 Bright, well-focused and framed. Looks fine during the daylight intervals. Some of the night footage is truly bad, though.Sound: 6/10 Fine for conversation, but the incidental music is anti-appropriate and too loud.Acting: 7/10 OK for the most part. I even recognized some of the actors.Screenplay: 1/10 Liked the section where George fires a rocket at their attackers, but ends up taking down a commercial jet instead. Other than that, there were too many jump the shark moments.

It's a fairly entertaining film, but it falls well short of its stated aim of being the next "Shaun of the Dead". I'm not sure whether that's down to the writer or the director.In short, the film wants to be a comedy horror, in the vein of Shaun of the Dead, but it fails at this task utterly. It fails because , as far as I could tell, it forgets one thing.The horror has to be camp and somewhat unbelievable - cartoonish, if you will.Severance instead presents its horror as gory and realistic, which is fine in a horror film, but not in a horror-comedy. As a result of the grim and realistic violence portrayed, the comedy comes across as a weak second best. An also-ran of movie traits.Not that the comedy is very good. It's weak, making you chuckle a bit here and there, but you find it difficult to laugh properly because of the grim horror that either precedes or follows it.The actors do their best with the script but they are overwhelmed, frankly. Their characters are pretty much all unlikeable for one reason or another and its difficult to feel any kind of connection to any one of them, especially the pair you are supposed to connect with.So, as a comedy-horror it's a failure. But it is entertaining if you forget the comedy aspect and treat it as a simple horror story. Then it becomes more palatable, though still nothing special.If there's nothing better on and you're particularly bored, then give it a go. Just don't believe the hype.