Review of The Belko Experiment (2017) by Kristofer H — 17 Mar 2017

Proper Perspective: As a humble narrator named Alex would say, "The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence." This movie is ultra-violent...

Official Synopsis: In a twisted social experiment, 80 Americans are locked in their high-rise corporate office in Bogotá, Colombia and ordered by an unknown voice coming from the company's intercom system to participate in a deadly game of kill or be killed.

Plot: The official synopsis sort of nailed it. The 80 Americans are employees of the company and as you saw in the commercials, they all had "trackers" implanted in their skulls that turn out to not be trackers.

Take: Fun may not be the operative word to use to describe this movie. Maybe if I were a sadist, but this movie is entertaining and taps into the most primal instincts that one would have in a kill or be killed situation like this. Like in real life, there were various reactions to this situation.

The movie does a good job of showing how like minds would come together, some people would want to do this and others would want to do that, while others would just try to maintain their sanity.

The star of this movie is the writing and directing, which were done fabulously by James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, Slither) and Greg McClean (Wolf Creek). The two worked so well together creating lively characters that you can care about in such little time. The movie is only 88 minutes, but creates character depth that most movies struggle with in a full trilogy.

Overall the cast is great. This is the B- star cast of faces you will recognize from tons of good movies.

John Gallagher Jr. (Hush, Short Term 12), Tony Goldwyn (The Last Samurai, The Pelican Brief), John C. McGinley (Scrubs, The Rock), and Sean Gunn (Super, Guardians of the Galaxy) were the standouts among the group. Of course they split off into groups with different ideologies, but even in the groups there were conflicts about how to handle the situation which made the movie feel all the more real.

Again, the writing and the directing were the stars of this movie. Great B movie cast with solid performances and fleshed out characters. Belko is a worthy Experiment.

Recommendation: If you can stomach ultra-violence and like the tone of a James Gunn movie you will love Belko. Now, if we could retroactively swap this cast and writing team and director with the folks that made Kong: Skull Island, I think we would have a GREAT Kong movie...

The Gunn's might be National Treasures, Sean as the stoner nearly stole the whole movie...