Review of Severance (2006) by Steven B — 15 Feb 2010

This movie is really weak. For years I've heard about how clever and witty the script is, and how it's a solid bloody-good time for horror veterans, so I was pumped to see this. There are so many faults with this film that it's really hard to like it at all. The film is so cliched you'd have a better time watching Leprechaun in Space.

To start with, all of the characters are unlikable: Our stoner protagonist is an absolute bore; the team leader is just plain annoying, the two female office workers both come off as bitchy (I'll get more into this later). The only character I wanted to see live was the black man, and, of course, the black man always dies in horror films (except Deep Blue Sea, what an exception!). Now back to the female characters. There is a notion called the "virgin/whore duality theory." Essentially, when this theory is applied to a film, it means that the female characters either come off as stiff, ultra-conservative prudes or as characters who wear barely no clothing so their assets can hang out. The two office working characters in this film both come off as the virgin, since they're really snappy at the other characters, and they constantly turn down the stoner protagonists advances. The only other two females in this film is a pair of escort girls, who end up removing their jackets to reveal double D breasts that are just there because, well, what good is a horror film if there are no titties? Showing off the voluptuous aspects of females to help draw in an audience is weak, and just helps prove that your film has no merit, so why not distract the audience away from our shitty scriptwriting by flashing some huge boobs?

Other than that I think the "bad guys" were terrorists, or something. I'm not to sure, I was really bored and the plot was really muddled that I'm not sure if the corporation that the main characters work for sold the guns to the terrorists, or if the terrorists are actually disgruntled soldiers who love to kill. I don't know. If you can explain this or explain why this movie is good, I'd be interested to here why.