Severance film review

certificate_15

SEVERANCE

Two years after his grisly and nonsensical horror debut Creep, English director Christopher Smith returns to the scene with a horror comedy. While Creep's many flaws could be forgiven for being the work of a keen novice, this time around there are no excuses: Severance is a desperately unfunny and woefully plotted film which would like to cash in on the back of comedy horrors such as Shaun of the Dead but fails miserably.

The story - riddled with anomalies and often just used as a device to introduce the next sub-par joke - concerns a group of English workers from an arms manufacturer who for reasons of plot expediency spend a team-building weekend in an isolated farmhouse in Hungary. They are a broad set of stereotypes with barely one dimension between them, including an uptight boss (Tim McInnerny), a laddish drugs-taker (Danny Dyer), a sexy American (Laura Harris), a charm-free business affairs guy (Toby Stephens) and a geek (Andy Nyman). Between them they are given lines that wouldn't make the first draft of an Alan Ayckbourn play, all in the name of supposed comedy.

Once they have settled in their ramshackle guest house and told a few ghostly stories, they inevitably start to disappear in bloody circumstances. It turns out that there are strange locals in the woods: think Deliverance, Southern Comfort or the recent Cabin Fever and you get the idea. The second half of the film is basically an extended chase sequence which is uninvolving, unbelievable and uninspiring.

While Smith shows once again that he has an ability with the camera, he really should leave the writing to someone else. Character, plots and humour are all given short shrift and frankly lack any form of conviction. The only real successes of the affair are the impressive prosthetic limbs which fly about in several directions.

Perhaps the film's biggest talking point is its 15 certificate: rarely can so much blood and gore have been given such a lenient time of it by the censors. Perhaps they detected some humour and reacted accordingly, but it's a shame that as a result so many youngsters will waste their hard-earned pocket money on such an ill-advised adventure.

Paul Hurley