Severance - 30th August 2006

This had been advertised as 'The best British horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead'. I spent all the trailers thinking how many British horror comedies there had been since Simon Pegg's masterpiece...

I think I had issues reconciling the horror and comedy parts of this film. Most of it I found genuinely quite scary (I admit I did spent most of the film hiding behind my jacket) and the majority of the violence and gore were presented as straight horror, which made the jump to the supposedly amusing bits even more jarring. Every so often there would be a moment of almost surreal comedy (for example the little dance when Maggie is trying to choose a stone with which to bash in her attacker's head) which, sandwiched between the brutal and frenetic attack and then the eventual head-squishing, seemed completely out of place. Okay, bear traps and decapitation may have been quite funny but Jill being set on fire was just disturbing.

There were quite a few nice bits - the office-based characters, although complete stereotypes, were funny because they were recognisable (I could probably tick off all the characters from the office where I last worked). It was also just nice to see British people, warts and all, at the cinema; after a while my brain has become filled with the ubiquitous homogenous, ridiculously attractive, Hollywood types. Captain Darling was brilliant as the ineffective manager and his untimely and ironic death was actually surprisingly touching.

Other bits I quite liked were the amusing arms-dealing bits – particularly the rocket launcher – although more could have been done with this. Also the first scene was good, the meaning of which became clear later. As for the rest of it, the horror aspect was almost too knowing, the suspense was being endlessly built up before the viewer was ‘fooled’ when nothing happened. And once the enemy has become apparent the whole chasing/fighting bit at the end became a bit repetitive.

Also: despite the imaginatively illustrated stories, which may have been one of the best parts of the film, it was never explained what was behind all the murderous nutters. Maybe that was for the best: 4.