Have you ever thought of your workplace as a battleground? Ever considered weaponry, allies, strongholds, vulnerabilities and lethal foes throughout your office building? Actually, no. I have not. Rats. I really thought I’d have fun writing this review, but as angry as I’ve ever been in twenty-five years of office life, I’ve never actually wanted to kill any of my co-workers. Sure, it would be great if a few would simply … move on, but there’s a big difference between an annoyance and something actionable.
Today’s movie is The Belko Experiment, where corporate law meets jungle law. Stuck in a strangely barren and unpopulated section of rural Bogotá, Colombia, the seven story Belko Industries building is on lock-down for a day. This lock-down isn’t metaphorical by any stretch – the building is literally cocooned in what may as well be the metal stuff fused to Wolverine’s skeleton. Inside, the 80-at-first-count coworkers have been encouraged to murder one another over loudspeaker. They have been given parameters, the first being “kill any two co-workers within the next half-hour.” You know how for profit business is – fail to meet a quota and heads will roll.
The first deadline is not taken seriously, of course. I don’t want to know the office where such is taken seriously at the outset. And when the half-hour elapses with an inconvenient eighty people still living, four find their skull implants detonated. Look, if you have to get a skull implant for a job, that’s a warning sign. Not saying it’s a deal breaker necessarily. Just … a warning sign. Most corporate offices do not require the implantation of incendiary devices within one’s skull.
[You could probably stop the movie right here actually. I mean, most of these folks are Americans in Colombia. You’re gonna tell me they made flights back and forth with explosives on board? Nobody ever bumped their head or got in a car accident and blew his own skull open? That’s some pretty awesome technology.]
It is clear from the first lockdown and corresponding announcement that the people playing God expect a large body count on the day. And why are they doing this? Science! This is what you get when you combine modern plutocracy with legalized slavery. The rest is just a body count.
You don’t make a film like this without secretly wanting to kill your co-workers. Am I wrong? I don’t think so. Hence, I feel a little cheated. The Belko Experiment set up heroes, villains and fodder, but didn’t seem to have any fun with the outrageous set-up. It played very straight-laced and surprisingly found only a handful of ways to kill people. Most, sadly, involved guns. There isn’t a white collar worker in the world who hasn’t got a pet peeve about something. The dream of every desk jockey is to conquer that peeve. A film like this requires 
you to personify that something and then find a fun way to kill it. This whole film feels like draft one – ok, you got the basic concepts of action, drama and horror … now where’s the entertainment?
There could have been such wicked black humor in this film, no? Apply it to Office Space? Wouldn’t you love seeing every single Bob die in an unpleasant fashion? Considering one of the Bobs (John C. McGinley) is actually in The Belko Experiment, this seems an unforgivable error in tone, no? How about scalding Lumbergh with coffee and then drowning him in it? Oh, and you gotta have some special torture devised for the “it looks like somebody’s got a case of the Mondays” woman. How about seeing Milton wrestle his red stapler from Lumbergh and then unload it into something very sensitive? Yes, it’s disturbing that I’ve thought about this for more than 60 seconds. Understand, however, I feel cheated. I don’t have any tolerance for real life office violence, but I could find some room for fictional office violence. I find this an experimental failure.
It’s a day for cufflink murder
And bodies by the score
Get out your mouse and sharpie
Prepare for corporate war
Consuela took Bob’s parking space
They’ll sort it out with lead
Beth met with in-house counsel
And “habeas” has fled
There goes Constance in accounting
And Skip from level four
Mary won’t be complaining about
The glass ceiling any more
Chen has lethal knick-knacks
And curios galore
Death by beanie-baby?
What fun, it’s corporate war
Rated R, 88 Minutes
D: Greg McLean
W: James Gunn
Genre: Adding horror where none should be
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Resentful white collar employees
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Horrified white collar employees
