Severance

By Jan Stuart, Newsday, Zap2It.com | May 18, 2007

'Severance'

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The first and bloodiest victim in the British slasher-flick comedy "Severance" is a trigger-happy American named George.

Any inference one may draw to a living person in a seat of high power is purely intentional. As it happens, the filmmakers keep the doomed fellow's Christian name under wraps until the eleventh hour, all in keeping with the sly modus operandi of a horror spoof that teases and tickles before it goes for the jugular.

Christopher Smith's "Severance" is an odd but entirely welcome duck: a horror spoof that strays into zones of political and ethical consequence, without ever becoming mired in them. Its murder targets are a frisky young group of laptop minions at Palisade, a global arms supplier that has made its fortune off the manufacture and distribution of "weapons you can trust."

In theory, these are just the sort of yuppie opportunists one would be delighted to see separated from their morally bankrupt heads. Upon closer inspection, however, the seven employees sharing a weekend team-building retreat at a company spa on the Hungary border are quite disarming and likable in their fallibly human ways.

There is the token stoner with sex on the brain (the incorrigibly funny Danny Dyer), the token American babe (Laura Harris, of Canadian stock), the token black guy (Babou Ceesay), the rugged pretty boy (Toby Stephens), the clueless, Ricky Gervais-ish manager (Tim McInnerny), the lone voice of liberal conscience (Claudie Blakley) and the dweeby office parliamentarian (Andy Nyman),

Like Nyman'sprotocol-obsessed character, "Severance" plays strictly (if irreverently) by the rules of the genre's casualty requirements: a quick scan of the dramatis personae should clue you in to who will still be standing after an anonymous predator in the woods finishes picking off the group's members one by one. Once the limbs begin to roll, "Severance" deftly shifts gears from impish humor to Grand Guignol, producing its intended chills without rubbing our faces in maiming and suffering a la "Hostel" and "Saw."

The predominantly English cast exudes a tight ensemble energy that keeps the film sprightly even when matters turn grim. All those classical credits on their resumes suggest that acting Shakespeare is a far more effective, not to say less dangerous, method of team-building than weekend retreats in dark Eastern European woods.