My Review of 'The Belko Experiment'

The Belko Experiment comes to us from the director of Wolf Creek and The Darkness and is written by James Gunn of Guardians of the Galaxy fame. This film is about 80 employees and a small office building; suddenly large metal doors around the building and a voice comes over the intercom saying if you guys don't kill a certain amount of people then we're going to kill double that amount. Have fun! And, from that moment on we have The Purge meets Battle Royale meets The Hunger Games meets Office Space, I guess. Jhansi McKinley's even in it. All we need is Milton to kill somebody with his stapler.

I have a really good friend whose a fantastic screenwriter, who often likes to joke about "the pitch" movie. Now, to him, a "pitch" movie is when you walk into an office and you say what if we made Beauty and the Beast except the Beast is the Predator. You guys get what I'm saying? Whoever made Under Siege back in the day with Steven Seagal probably walked into an office and said what if we made Die Hard except on a boat?

The Belko Experiment is a fantastic "pitch" movie, it's a great concept you can walk into an office and say hey, for 5 million dollars I'll get you guys your money back! Let's do this idea about a bunch of people in an office and forced to kill each other. Okay, that's an easy sell. James Gunn is writing it and he's a big name now because of Guardians of the Galaxy; let's do it! That's what I like the most about this movie is the concept, the social study of what will you do if you feel like you're forced to do something that you know is wrong. Will you pull that trigger? Will you try to defend yourself? Or will you allow your morals to do the right thing?

In this horrific moment I loved that idea and after leaving The Belko Experiment, I can tell you that I'd basically just saw an extremely gory grindhouse version of that idea that had barely anything to say and did almost every uninteresting thing you could have done with the situation at every single turn. The movie has an opportunity to do something creative even if you can't get creative with your idea. The movie has tons of opportunities to make creative kills or make at least that aspect of the movie fun satirical lighthearted. But, at every single turn the movie choose is the less creative route and just goes for a bunch of deaths that really had no impact and in the long run the movie just kind of ends with the most on the nose setup for a sequel I've seen since Independence Day Resurgence.

When they actually have an entire scene dedicated to setting up a sequel this movie has a moment where you're just like oh so there's going to be another one, I guess. Okay, do I have a say? I love James Gunn as a writer, I like Slither, Guardians of the Galaxy and the movie Super is extremely entertaining and kind of disgusting, but it's different. I really admire him as a writer and I think that his screenplay here had possibilities.

When it comes to Alien Resurrection, for example, the screenplay that Joss Whedon wrote is basically onscreen; his ideas, his plotting, his dialogue, but the director of Alien Resurrection took his screenplay which was more of a fun lighthearted tone and turned it a very serious movie. So suddenly these two tones; writer and director, what they are both going for didn't work. The Belko Experiment feels like it should have been a more lighthearted film despite the fact that it is a rather terrifying idea. There should have been a dose of satirical edge to this film a dose of humor maybe just a slight ray of sunshine in this horrific situation.

The way the film is helmed is so over the top and serious and I get it you know I can understand why if you look at the screenplay could say, okay, this is a really horrifying terrible situation, but the film doesn't do anything creative with it. I must go back to that the entire idea of this film is a great idea it's just that it's told in the blandest way that you could imagine and even if they were just going to go for a movie that's just about the kills, the kills are boring! There are times I don't like to get into spoilers, but they just kind of line people up and that's it.

I mean there's a few moments with some really impressive prosthetics but overall even that aspect to the movie, I don't think is going to please even the most bloodthirsty genre fan. Because I love horror movies they're kind of my thing, if they're done right. And, this film had so many good ideas and it just about every turn they choose the more bland route. I honestly had more fun talking about this movie with my friend, who I saw it with than I did watching the movie. Both of us agreed that it was a fantastic idea.

There was a good film in here somewhere it was just waiting to blossom, but the way that it goes about telling the story is so routine and there's just nothing you can really take away from it in the end except for the idea that they want to make more.

As I was watching it I was thinking, this is okay, it feels kind of like something that John Carpenter would have made in the early seventies like an Assault on Precinct 13; just this very gory grindhouse film that is just completely balls-to-the-wall who gives a crap. Let's just have some fun, but along the way, the film gets increasingly bleak and increasingly cynical to the point where the film really has nothing to say and it's a movie that's kind of about a social experiment with nothing to say.

That's not good. The film also has an absurd amount of red herrings. It follows one character for the entire film whose is a side character they keep cutting back to and it really goes nowhere in the long run and when you look back on the film that entire character just feels like a waste to the runtime.

There's this whole thing with water; they keep cutting to water, they keep discussing water, there are all these red herrings in this movie. These plot devices that are thrown at you and you think are they going to do something creative or different, but nope. It's just going to be you got to kill a bunch of people for no reason.

It's just, come on guys, let's get some creativity going here with such a cool concept and that's for the ending, of course, I won't spoil it but it just ended and there were so many good ideas. I had such a great idea for how they could end this and I'm going to respect it because it seemed like maybe it was going in that direction. And, I don't want to get into it because it's spoilers, but it would have given the film something to latch onto. Where we are like, damn that really says something. I thought it would have been such a cool idea but they didn't go a single place with it.

In the long run, I was disappointed in The Belko Experiment and I'm going to give it a C. This movie really could have been something cool, but they just went nowhere with such a really great concept and it's disappointing.