Severance

Ever have to go on "team building" retreat with your office mates? As if spending five days a week, nine hours a day with those losers isn't bad enough, imagine having to fly all the way to the Hungarian wilderness to be with them (and, of course, your boss) in a derelict cabin with no TV for so-called R & R. Sounds like a real horror show, doesn't it?

Well, it is a horror movie… of sorts. Severance is a British-made comedy in the tradition of The Office, with a dash of Hostel thrown in. Kind of. That rather sums the flick up — there's a lot of kinda / sorta / almosts about it… while it doesn't quite fire on all cylinders, it does its job well enough.

When the busload of our workaday heroes — middle manager Richard (Tim McInnerny); his bland assistant Billy (Babou Ceesay); pretty but tough Maggie (Laura Harris); slacker Steve (Danny Dyer); scornful Harris (Toby Stephens); socially awkward Gordon (Andy Nyman); and untrained Jill (Claudie Blakley) — run into bus trouble on the way to the retreat, they are left stranded and forced to walk several miles to the cabin.

Their problems really begin when the team, who just happen to work for international arms conglomerate Palisade Defense, encounters a renegade band of war-crazed soldiers seeking revenge on anyone with a foreign accent. The office-soft guys and girls become targets, literally, and must run for their lives. However, when running, they encounter a myriad of booby-traps including steel bear-snares, explosive lands, flashy flamethrowers, deadly ditches, and so much more. (Of course, there's always a little time for nudity and cracking wise.)

When it works, Severance brings home the bacon on its mix of horror and hilarity — one gruesome scene following a conversation about the guillotine is an especially well-wrought 360º — but far too much of it contains corporate talk and political commentary.

A lighter hand on the comedy and a heavier one in the editing room would have served Severance well; as it is, it's not worth taking a sick day to see in theaters (in limited release now, it should be on DVD soon enough).

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson