Filmology Rating: 2 out of 4

I follow James Gunn on Facebook, so for the past three months or so I have seen him hyping up the latest project he had been working, on The Belko Experiment.  I found myself buying into the hype and how could I not?  This was coming from the man who brought us one of the most colorful and fun superhero movies of all time.  I knew little about the actual film other than I was in for a bloody time.  I was expecting the film to be more along the lines of Kick-Ass with its violence, yet what I ended up getting was a Battle Royale.  

In rural Columbia, Belko Industry employees show up to work confused as to why all of the locals didn’t show up to work for the day.  The military presence at the building is also at an all time high, making everyone uneasy, but then a voice comes over the overhead speakers telling the employees that in eight hours all but one of them will be dead.  From that moment until the last frame of the film, chaos ensues as the eighty employees of Belko Industry fight for their lives.

While I personally have a slight problem with violence in films, if the acts of violence have a purpose and help evolve either the story or the character then I applaud the style choices that are made.  The violence in The Hunger Games series and Battle Royale are needed and without them the films wouldn’t have the impact that they aim for.  The Belko Experiment however doesn’t go that over the top with the violence, nor does it have much to say about the human condition or values that we hold as a society.  A vague social experiment that is actually never explained seems odd.  We live in a world that has given us works like Lord of the Flies and The Most Dangerous Game, these concepts have been explored for years so if you bring nothing new to the table then it becomes a slug to watch.  Perhaps I can try to make the leap that leadership at management levels don’t care about the employees they are supposed to lead, they only care about the bottom line and that they look good.  I don’t feel that is much of a leap and is usually a true statement at the workplace.  A manager who wants to move up at a company would kill those below him to move up; after working in the retail field for a few years now I believe that would happen without question.  

The film has a large cast, eighty employees working and you really only get to know and understand a slight few of them.  Mike, Barry, Leandra, Wendell, Evan, and Terry.  Six people out of eighty and while I didn’t want the film to go any longer I still don’t feel like I got to know any of these characters, what makes them tick, and why.  You have the crazy creepy one who is just crazy, you have the one who wants to kill people so he can protect his family, one who is just a good person because he is a good person.  That is all the character definition that you are going to get in this film and it’s incredibly frustrating.  You want to root for someone in a film where most of the people are monsters otherwise you just cross your arms and feel bored.  I’m not saying that the characters you are rooting for need to be good, I love movies with a good antagonist like Darth Vader or The Joker, but you need to understand the morals of the character more than a one sentence objective.

I wanted to like this film, I went into the film with open arms wanting to watch a bloody good show, but the story itself is too simple and the gore is too tame to satisfy the sadistic part in my brain.  If you haven’t seen Battle Royale or The Hunger Games films then you might love this film but if you have then you will feel the repetitiveness of this film.   

Rating: Rent It

-Jonny G