It’s a little strange writing the review for this because before I watched the film the other night, I’d more or less turned into James Moran’s blog stalker having more or less read his blog all the way through. James is the writer of Severance and is something he’s been working on for the entire duration of his blog, since way back when it was referred to by him as “Primeval”.

So any praise I might lay down on Severance may be interpreted as not wanting to upset someone who is more “real” to me than, say, John Logan who write the diabolically bad screenplay for Star Trek: Nemesis and whose blog - if he has one - I haven’t read therefore don’t know any of the thinking that’s gone into it. (As it happens, I do but only from what he’s said in interviews and frankly, I don’t want to think about it because it was unmitigated shite.) Then again, I’ve never held back from telling people what I think. It’s got me into more trouble than I care to remember but that’s never stopped me before either.

The long and short of it is that Severance is a good film. Verging on “very good” but I’ll probably just settle on “pretty good”. Essentially it’s a slasher film but it’s written by someone who a) definitely appreciates horror films and b) is sick of the derivative and cliche ridden crap that seems to flood our cinemas these days. If I didn’t know this from reading his blog, I’d certainly know this from the film. There are some cracking lines which really demonstrate this. My favourite has to be an exchange between Steve (Danny Dyer) and Maggie (Laura Harries) when they first realise they’re being hunted by some nasty types and return to the building they’re staying in. Note that it’s already been established that Gordon, a geek, is the very personification of the Cub Scouts motto “be prepared” and has all the supplies that everyone might need but wouldn’t think of bringing. It goes something like (and I’m doing this from memory so it may not be quite right)

BILLY
We need to block the doors. Let’s find a hammer and nails.

MAGGIE
Perhaps Gordon has some in his bag

STEVE
Oh come on. Why would Gordon have brought a hammer and nails with him?

Maggie searches Gordon’s bag and pulls out a hammer and a pack of nails.

STEVE
For fuck’s sake!

Steve’s last exclamation takes an absurd situation and resolution and redeems it because they characters acknowledge that it’s entirely implausible but it is in keeping with the characters. Or something. Other people can tell you how it works in a better way than I can but it does work.

Later on there’s another line which totally demonstrates the writers contempt for some of the more popular horror film cliches but it’s a spoiler so I won’t share it here.

I haven’t told you what it’s about: quite simply, a group of people go to Hungary for a corporate team-building weekend and while they’re there, the shit hits the fan when they realise there’s a killer out to get them. The characters are very well observed: Tim McInnery is a very convincing “waste of space” manager, Toby Stephens is excellent as the arrogant and aloof Sales person while Danny Dyer is brilliant as the slightly chav Steve. (The only issue I had with his character is that I couldn’t work out what he did or how he fit in with the rest of the team. He seemed very out of place but not so out of place that it detracted from the film).

Chris Smith’s direction is solid and convincing. I haven’t seen his first film, Creep, yet but it’s on my list on the strength of this (and because it stars the lovely Franka Potente). He manages both the action and the humour well and if I have any criticism it’s the relative lack of suspense. That’s only in hindsight though as I didn’t feel it was missing at the time. If anything, that’s the only problem I have with the film - at times it seems like it was so keen to avoid any of the pitfalls of your standard slasher fare that it cut its nose off to spite its face. It possibly could have done with a little more misdirection in places and a little more “will they, won’t they get jumped/trapped/killed” to add a little more suspense. It wasn’t that there wasn’t any but there could have been some more. Oh, and there’s a dream sequence that I thought was totally unneccesary and out of place.

Perhaps I’m trying to over compensate because of not wanting to sound like I’m sucking up to someone I don’t know and who isn’t going to read this but I don’t think I am. I enjoyed Severance and would recommend it to people (unless they were people who, you know, didn’t like horror films or the sight of blood.) It does have its tongue in its cheek but takes itself seriously enough to be scary. Worth watching.