SEVERANCE

Seven employees of a multinational arms company, Palisade Defence, are heading to a chalet in the Hungarian woods for a weekend together with the intention of giving greater cohesion to the work team. Upon arrival, the seven find themselves in a shack that differs greatly from the chalet they were promised, but convinced that their expectations were deceived by a joke from their boss, they organize to spend the night. Someone is roaming through the woods; someone intent on making the Palisade Defence employees have a quiet weekend of fear! At the end of the viewing of "Severance" one has the feeling that today England is one of the most happily promising countries in the field of horror cinema; in fact, it is probably a confirmation, since for some years now Great Britain has been delighting us with products of excellent workmanship. The pioneer was undoubtedly Danny Boyle with his "28 Days Later", followed by the talent of Neil Marshall with the excellent "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent", passing through the equally excellent "Dawn of the Dead Demented" by Edgar Wright. Added to the list of "promising guys" is Christopher Smith, probably less gifted than the aforementioned colleagues, but still worthy of attention. Smith had already convinced us in 2004 with "Creep - The Surgeon", a tense and claustrophobic metropolitan horror thriller, and now he returns with a film that has a decidedly different cut. "Severance" is in the border territories between survival horror and grotesque comedy, a mix that brings to mind "Cabin Fever" by Eli Roth, both for the bucolic setting and for the abundant use of demented ideas. The film is skillfully and constantly balanced between the two genres and, if the first part leans decisively towards the side of comedy, the development of the plot in the second part embraces with conviction pure horror, not disdaining here and there the incisive touch of humor. The structure that underlies "Severance" is simple and schematic, in pure survival tradition, with the addition of more than one element of slasher. The woodland setting and the human (or sub-human) nature of the threat is of clear survival matrix, with as much man hunting and various traps camouflaged among the leaves; the body-count, the ferocity and the spectacularization of some deaths, as well as the frequent use of white weapons, makes the film belong decisively also to the slasher genre, especially if it is of jasonian memory, thus making "Severance" appear as an inter-genre and intra-genre hybrid. Absolutely spot-on some directorial and screenwriting ideas, such as the desire to cite/parody German Expressionism in the delicious story that one of the protagonists tells regarding the origin of the places they are in, a mini movie within the movie that shows a clawed character who mimics Murnau's "Nosferatu", with as many shadow games, skewed shots and captions. But the citational game does not stop here, in fact follow, in order, a documentary insert that recalls war reports and a trashy soft-core moment with eager nurses, all alternated with skill and extreme naturalness. Good also the characterization of the characters that intelligently plays with the stereotype to give life to a team of characters as odious as sympathetic, played by a cast of good actors among whom Laura Harris stands out especially ("The Faculty"; "The Calling"). Seven characters involved in a story that does not disdain to also carry out a light criticism of the excessive power of war-mongering multinationals. Good the dose of gore, generously distributed both in grotesque situations (the leg in the trap) and in other dramatic ones (the fight with stone blows). The ending does not completely convince, however, undecided whether to follow the over-the-top path confirming the grotesque style of the rest of the film or to allow a timid normalization. After the two "Hostel" and this "Severance", the countries of Eastern Europe are now curiously promoted as the place par excellence for sevices, violence, depravity and madness!