I’ve been looking forward to The Belko Experiment for awhile. The trailers promised some great actors in an absurd plot (summarized in the trailer quite nicely as “Battle Royale meets Office Space”) that looked like the kind of violent exploitation flick that rarely makes it to theaters anymore. In other words, it looked right up my alley. And it kind of delivers. Kind of. It never reaches the violent heights of Battle Royale, nor does it have the humor of Office Space. As such, it is something of a middle ground that doesn’t completely deliver on either end of that succinct description. It is a good movie, sure. But not what I expected or hoped for.
The plot is quite simple and is explained almost entirely in the trailers. An office building is suddenly locked up and a mysterious voice announces to the employees that they must begin killing each other or they will all be killed. The rest of the film is a steady rise in violence and paranoia as the workers slowly (and not so slowly) turn on each other. It’s an interesting concept that is anchored by some great character actors. People like Michael Rooker, Tony Goldwyn and John C. McGinley may not have the most famous names, but they are actors that almost everyone recognizes even if they don’t know why or from what. Great concept and great cast.
My biggest issue with The Belko Experiment is its tone. I don’t know why, but I expected this to be a more campy and over-the-top film. I kept waiting for characters to find an unexplained depository of chainsaws or something for battle. But, no. For the most part, the film is much more serious and grounded than I expected. That is relative, of course. At its core, it is a silly film and there is some great dark humor on display here. But the violence is often more somber than one would expect from a film with this concept. There are execution scenes in this that seem like they are out of a freaking war movie, but then those scenes are followed with jokes about stoner characters that are paranoid about the drinking water. It’s a tonally bizarre film that is neither completely serious or particularly funny. Individual scenes work, but the film as a whole feels like a weird mishmash that was a couple of rewrites away from being ready.
Despite that tonal inconsistency, there are some really good things here. As mentioned, the performances are great across the board. The script is also unpredictable in terms of who will live and who will die. I can usually tell quite early in a thriller which characters will live, but not in this. Important characters that you think are safe will be surprisingly and unceremoniously killed in an instant. And while the violence and gore are not nearly as creative or graphic as I expected, the special effects are very well done in an old-school, practical style (in other words, the gore doesn’t look like a video game cutscene).
I feel like I should like this more than I do. It certainly seems like something that I should love. It has great actors, some surprising moments and solid special effects. But the whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts. There is nothing particularly memorable about this film and it struggles to find an identity. It is often too serious to be fun and often too fun to be serious, leaving a decent film that is not perfect for any mood. Not worth rushing to the theater, but it is worth a watch on Netflix or Hulu or MySpace or whatever the hell you kids are using these days.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Belko_Experiment#/media/File:The_Belko_Experiment_poster.jpg
