Movies like this just make me break out my lists, look for a place to wedge this movie, so it can be that much closer to my heart. Which, I know it’s got to be an almost-empty statement by now, but, using Feast as my touchstone, and acknowledging that Leslie Vernon was the best since, and Save the Green Planet the best since Leslie Vernon, then, Severance, it’s the best since Green Planet, for me. Just did every last single thing right, I think. I mean, no, it’s not a true slasher (there’s no real red herring), but it’s pure horror-comedy fun, anyway. Nothing but good. In the extra features, the director says how the difficult thing with horror-comedy is getting the tone right — a balance, I think, of gore and whether or not the characters kind of know or act like they’re in a comedy. Severance hits that balance perfectly: funny stuff happens (the bear trap scene is about the best thing I’ve seen ever), but the characters just keep screaming and running. Unlike, say, in Decampitated, very fun its own right, but operating at a different level, with a different tone.
So, yeah, I guess my old list of horror comedy’s here, but now it needs both Leslie Vernon and Severance. And if have to keep it to ten for some vague metric and/or biblical reason, then I’d drop Slither and Decampitated, I think. Sadly, however. But Severance, it’s just so well-written, I think, and then well-directed, well-acted, all of that*. And still it somehow missed wide release. The world’s not so fair.
Also, I’m lucky to have stumbled onto this. For some reason, I had it confused with The Tripper (which I’m still waiting for), even though The Tripper’s victim pool’s hippies and Severance’s is office folk. Who knows.
* Okay, the one thing it maybe screwed up on was the title, and then trying to make that title matter in the dramatic line (which, it feels like a tack-on). That’s more than made up for by a wholly gratuitous machine-gun episode towards the end, however.