Movies featuring a group of people forced to kill each other by some type of overlord character, either for entertainment/punishment purposes (The Running Man, Battle Royale), a test of humanity (The Human Race), or a poorly executed comment on class warfare that manages to somehow undermine its own satire at every turn with terrible writing (The Hunger Games franchise), have been around for quite some time. The Belko Experiment, the latest from writer James Gunn and director Greg McLean, falls into the 'test of humanity' camp, and it is quite a fine example of it.
The titular Belko is a company --one with multiple locations all around the world, but our film focuses on one in Columbia-- that facilitates the relocation for American companies to other parts of the world...or something (it really doesn't matter, it's mentioned once and never again). One fine day the local workers are refused entry by new armed guards, leaving just 80 employees inside the multistory building, including but not limited too: our protagonist, his love interest, a total creeper, the new girl, a stoner cafeteria worker, and the VP of that branch of the company. A day of work is suddenly interrupted by a thick sheet of metal covers up all windows and doors and a voice over the PA system tells them they have 2 hours to kill 30 of their coworkers or 60 will die instead via tiny bombs implanted in every employees' neck all Suicide Squad-style.
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James (Guardians of the Galaxy, Slither) Gunn, for the first time since 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake acting as writer only and not director, scripts a taut, self-contained bit of grue that, despite not really being as funny as the trailers make it out to be, does some things very right. There's a definite sense of history between all the characters, you believe they've been working together for a decent amount of time, to the point where some have little injokes and the like trading back and forth. Everything flows along organically and at a nice clip, never needing to over explain anything to us. My absolute favorite thing, however, has to do with our protagonist's work girlfriend. So often in these type of films were there can only be one survivor, they always come up with some bullshit contrivance to save the love interest. Words can't describe how happy I am they didn't follow that line here.
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Now it's confession time; I am not a fan of director Greg McLean. I hated Wolf Creek, I hated Rogue, I hated Wolf Creek 2, and I hated The Darkness. The Belko Experiment is the only film of his I've actually liked, and it just so happens this is the only film he's directed he didn't write as well, so I assume there's something fundamentally about his writing I don't like; however, as a great philosopher once said, "Who gives a fronk?" Let's talk about his direction and direction alone, and to do that I only need four words: it does the job. Nothing particularly outstanding, but it's fine, exactly what it needs to be.
Ultimately what we have here with The Belko Experiment is nothing you haven't really seen before, but done well enough it does feel somewhat fresh, so make of that what you will.
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