Movie Details
| Title: | Severance | |
| Director: | Christopher Smith | |
| Year: | 2006 | |
| Genre: | Horror | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.23.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (1)
- Creep
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.23.06 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2006 So after Tideland we got some food then sat in on an Aquisitions panel between SXSW Matt Dentler, John Pierson, and film buyers for Roadside Attractions and First Look Films. I basically wanted to see this to a) see what a Fantastic Fest panel would look like, b) silently make fun of everyone asking questions, and c) see how many times Pierson mentioned Roger & Me (only once, although Dentler brought it up a second time). Truthfully, it was a much better discussion than I thought it would be. That's largely due to the candor between the film buyers. Apparently, they decided that this was a minor enough event to be able to speak freely and dish some dirty about specific films that I'm used to only hearing about in vague ballpark figures. So that made it interesting for me, especially since I just finished reading Pierson's book (referred to as a bible multiple times) so this was like a 10-years-later epilogue saying how it all works now. So after that people were already lining up for the super secret special screening at 9... All day we'd been thinking about it and had it narrowed down to either 300 or Apocalypto. During the panel Jarrette found out that it was definitely Apocalypto. wee. So thanks to the way they worked it with the lines, they let us watch Severance and not lose our places for the 9 show, which was nice because Severance really kicked ass. It's like a Cabin Fever mixture of horror and comedy... mostly scary but constantly punctuated with some funny to keep it more of a fun type of horror than oppressive or Japanese. I hesitate to say anything specific because I think it's actually gonna come out here in some theaters, but the writer was in attendance and gave a quick Q&A where he said they're kicking around a sequel idea which revolves around a fantastic scene in the film... it actually sounds like a good sequel idea. But the gist of this movie is a bunch of yuppie defence contractors go up for a team-building weekend at some rustic lodge and run into some psycho paramilitary types who kill them. Yeah, the idea sounds pretty familiar... but the movie comes up with really funny little touches to set it apart from the rest in the survival horror genre, and really plays well to audiences. It's the first non-doc of the fest that I've really actively enjoyed. Definitely one to keep on the radar. |
