Corporate Retreat is a good horror comedy that falls short of being great. That’s not to say that it’s a bad movie. On the contrary this is a knowing commentary on artificial camaraderie in modern corporations that is drenched in blood. Written and directed Aaron Fisher with cowriter Kerri Lee Romeo, we get a slick, gleefully gory tale of employees being victimized by a lunatic boss through a series of increasingly dire situations. There are some wonderful moments, but the script keeps circling back on gore instead of firming up solid motivations.
As the story begins we meet the glaringly obvious final girl Ginger (Odeya Rush) and her douchey boyfriend Cliff (Elias Kacavas) as they arrive at a hilltop mansion for a weekend away. Spoiler, Ginger finds out that this is actually a team building weekend orchestrated by Cliff’s employer. A van rolls up to the house and Cliff’s coworkers begin to pour out. We have a collection of surprisingly young individuals with titles like Billie (Kirby Johnson) the HR manager and Devin (Benjamin Norris) the CEO that couldn’t be over 30. included in the mix is Carl (Ashton Sanders), Aubrey (Ellen Toland), Omar (Tyler Alvarez), Martha (Eden Amira) and Deborah (Rosanna Arquette). The crew is greeted at the door by Lola (Sasha Lane) and Amber (Zión Moreno) who take everyone’s phones in exchange for a branded weekend getaway uniform.
Things get interesting after the group is poisoned and suddenly told that they have everything in the house to create an antidote. Amber and Lola return with guns and their recently ousted boss, Arthur (Alan Ruck) appears on a flatscreen to spell out the agenda for the weekend. It’s kind of like Saw meets 9 to 5 where the employees are picked off through various challenges meant to help them transcend to a higher existence.
Yes, Arthur is nuts and that creates some wince-inducing scenes as he forces them to inflict harm on each other. The problem here is that he turns out to be surprisingly stupid. For psychotic mastermind that could lure his former employees to a remote location to torture them he is far too easily lured into his own game. By a criminal psychology student no less.
If you can ignore this glaring issue, there is some fun to be had not the least of which is watching Ruck chew the scenery with his bombastic turn as an evil boss. Rush is the perfect final as Ginger, though she seems to get away with a little too much. Additionally Johnson is great as the bubbly if feckless HR manager and Lane‘s comic timing makes Lola shine. Forget Arquette‘s blink and you’ll miss it part that amounts to a cameo.
The real star of this movie, however, are the practical effects that have these poor characters slicing, gouging, and dissecting one another. Director Aaron Fisher keeps the camera right up in the painful action and forces you to see some pretty gnarly stuff. I was pleasantly surprised there. He knows how to make an audience squirm but the script is too interested in torturing us to make anything plausible. Whatever. For a few laughs and some fiendish gore, Corporate Retreat is a good escape.
