p e n g u i n d e v i l

Starting off running, literally, I watched Severance, yet another in the wave of great new European Horror movies that started with 28 days Later… Here we open right away with a couple of young ladies running, panicked, through the woods, with a fellow running close behind them. Sadly, there certainly seem to be a lot of traps laid about these here hills! Once the girls fall into a pitfall and start to strip (no, not totally naked, calm down) to make a clothes rope to save themselves, you know it is going to be a fun ride.

A group of defense contractors are on a tour of Eastern Europe and they are headed for a “luxury lodge” for a weekend of team building exercises. Most of them seem bored by the notion, but the youthful chap of the bunch has called for some escorts to show up and has started eating his way through his bag of magic mushrooms, so he at least is expecting to see something fun. Sadly, after being abandoned by their “no English-speaking” bus driver they sidetrack to a short cut and they set off through the woods on foot, always a wise move in movieland. They come across a lodge, but it doesn’t seem very luxurious, and it has some other odd aspects to it. What are those strange, beast-like noises in the woods, why does the generator room contain lots of old files on the company that they work for and did Jill really see a masked man outside of her second story window? Postulating the situation, they go through an entertaining storytime session of “what if’s” where the lodge was either a WW1 era insane asylum or a sex lodge. The dynamics between these 7 folks is always a bit on edge: the “decide everything, know nothing” boss, the chipper yes man, the drug kid, the “hottie” and the “mousey” and the two other (and more with it) fellows it is a battle between should we stay or should we go. Though they aren’t quite sure if they are where they should be, they attempt to go about their business: dining on a pie that was found there (that no one can quite finish off), and a Paintball match (team building seems to be a funny business). But obviously, a point comes when the team building takes on a different level of seriousness.

That’s why they’re called bear “traps”

keeping things cool

smackdown!

As this is what it is… there is someone out there, and they makes themselves known. The rest of the movie involves such fun things as flamethrowers, guns, bear traps, pitfalls, landmines, even a classic scene of some of that old time “girls with automatic weapons” stuff

girl with gun

It is fairly low budget, not much in terms of sets of effects, and though it isn’t too scary or gory, there are some nice false scares and it is a lot of fun. At first I thought that Severance was a good renter but not a keeper, but as the end approached, it amped up a bit and I think is certainly a re-watchable keeper. And, not to give to much away, but I appreciate these movies that don’t fall into the tired old, “last girl standing” shtick. The movie breezes right by, seeming to take a half hour to burn through its 1.5 hour length and while it does follow some standard horror conventions, there are some unexpected surprises.

other unexpected surprises