PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Working in a corporate job setting can be tough. Sitting in your little cubicle day after day next to people you see more than your own family can either make you boring or make you insane. When the time comes for that certain promotion, you know at the end of the day that those people aren’t really friends at work as you jockey for that position. James Gunn’s 2017 film The Belko Experiment takes that workplace environment to a whole different level. The question is this: is the film successful? Or should James Gunn be fired from doing another horror film?
https://youtu.be/qZNfwayNLL0
The Belko Experiment was directed by Greg Mclean and written by James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy 2014) and opened in theaters on March 17th, 2017. The overall box office total for the opening weekend was slightly above $4.1 million on a $5 million dollar budget. The film probably would have fared better had it not gone up against Disney’s highly anticipated Beauty and The Beast. It currently holds a 47% on Rotten Tomatoes declaring it Rotten and a 6.6/10 on IMDb.com. Why the mixed reviews? Maybe because they tried to jam pack all the action in only an hour and twenty-eight minutes.
Official Synopsis of The Belko Experiment:
In a twisted social experiment, 80 Americans are locked in their high-rise corporate office in Bogotá, Colombia, and ordered by an unknown voice coming from the company’s intercom system to participate in a deadly game of kill or be killed.
I am going to give you some reasons why I think you might like and dislike The Belko Experiment. Let’s start with why I think you might like it.
- I’ll start with the cast, most notably Tony Goldwyn (The Last House on the Left 2009) as Barry. I am convinced that, had his character Carl survived in the movie Ghost, he would go on to move to Columbia and change his name to Barry. Other casting includes the wonderful Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead TV series), John Gallagher Jr. (10 Cloverfield Lane), Adria Arjona (True Detective TV series), and John C. McGinley (Stan Against Evil TV series). My personal fan favorite of the film was Marty played by Sean Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy).
- If you like your horror movies bloody then you should count yourself in to watch The Belko Experiment as there is no shortage on blood splatter.
- It’s also a fun story with an interesting “up for interpretation” ending. That’s all I can really say without giving away spoilers.
Now on to the possible dislikes you may have about The Belko Experiment. *SPOILERS*
- Some of the best characters die way too early. It’s really hard to get attached to some of them because they die rather quickly and it’s difficult to get an actual feel of why the characters are the way they are.
- The death scenes could have been way more inventive. Out of how many deaths that happened, they only used two office supplies? That was a huge major let down for me as most of the kills take place with guns… that’s just dumb in my opinion. I mean, why are there guns in the workplace anyway? I guess you will have to watch to find out!
- As I said before, those who like “up for interpretation” endings will like this movie, however, I feel there needed to be more closure.
Final Thoughts:
The Belko Experiment had a lot of missed opportunities with making it a great horror movie but it’s still fun to watch. I felt that, as a viewer, it was over in the blink of an eye. Maybe adding an extra fifteen minutes to the film could have helped the story and given them room to create some better kill scenes. This was supposed to a kill or be killed scenario and most of these people just rolled over and let themselves get murdered. I have personally worked in the corporate world and I know damn well that some of my ex-co-workers would have been more cut-throat than these fools. When they were referring to this film early on as “The Office Space Purge,” I was so excited, but it left me hanging with the case of the Mondays. Maybe you will differently, let us know what you think!
