American white collar office workers become the subjects of a
sadistic, bloody, social exercise in “The Belko
Experiment,” a horror movie that has aspirations of satire, but isn’t sharp or
smart enough to decide what point it’s ultimately trying to make.
The day begins much like any other at a remote outpost of the
Belko Corporation, in Bogotรก, Columbia. Our hero,
Michael (John Gallagher Jr.) arrives for work, noting the new, heavily armed
security detail. He also thinks it a bit strange that all the local employees
have been told to go home for the day, but he doesn’t pay it too much mind.
That is, until a mysterious voice comes on the overhead intercom and calmly
instructs the remaining 80 people in the building that they must begin killing
off their fellow workers or face execution themselves.
The workers think it’s a joke, but then a few of the
“tracking devices” (installed at the base of every employee’s skull — in case of
kidnapping, they were told) start being set off, splattering the brains and
viscera of a few office drones against the walls. The voice threatens more head
popping unless everyone starts making with the murder.
At first, everyone works together to find an escape, but
those efforts break down and the workers begin to divide into factions. There’s
the “good guys” led by Michael and his in-office girlfriend, Leandra (Adria Arjona), and then there’s the “bad guys,” headed by the
company’s COO (Tony Goldwyn) and the general office weirdo (John C. McGinley).
It’s probably not much of a shock to say that before long, it’s hard to distinguish
between the groups.
I suppose this can be seen as a comment on the simmering
savagery that lurks beneath the bright, beaming exterior of corporate culture,
or of the depths we humans will sink in order to ensure our own survival. But
those points have been made before and better in a dozen other films.
“The Belko Experiment” comes from
director Greg McLean (“Wolf Creek”), with a script by James Gunn (“Guardians of
the Galaxy”), and the biggest problem is that the two can’t decide how
seriously they want to take their premise. Their indecision results in a tone
that veers wildly between tongue-in-cheek and deadly serious.
Certain other choices made by the filmmakers don’t help
matters. For instance, the initial chaos once heads start to explode is shot to
appear as though there might be a mass shooter loose in the building (and
that’s exactly what the characters initially think is happening). I probably
don’t need to tell you this makes for a queasy visual reference point. Still,
the performances are solid from the entire — incredibly game — cast.
But the film isn’t particularly stylish or inventive, and its
attempts at humor fall flat. The sheer ugliness of its worldview keeps the film
from being any fun. It’s actively unpleasant to watch innocents plead for their
lives before being viciously slaughtered over and over and over again.
I originally saw “The Belko
Experiment” back in September when it played as part of the Midnight Madness
program at the Toronto International Film Festival, and even amid an audience
tailor-made to appreciate a film like this (and they very much seemed to), it
didn’t quite work for me.
A lot of has changed in the world since last September,
though. I suspect that watching “The Belko
Experiment” now, its humor would probably still be lame and its ending still
astoundingly anti-climactic. But maybe its cynical edge would be cathartic: a
primal scream of rage from the average Joe forced to toil every day in a system
he knows is rigged. On the other hand, if I get the urge to watch people tear
each other apart and seek to destroy one another’s livelihoods, I can always
turn on the news.
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2017.
