Mayhem.

Review #2468: Mayhem.

Cast: 

Steven Yeun (Derek Cho), Samara Weaving (Melanie Cross), Steven Brand (John "The Boss" Towers), Caroline Chikezie (Kara "The Siren" Powell), Kerry Fox (Irene Smythe), Dallas Roberts (Lester "The Reaper" McGill), Mark Frost (Ewan Niles), Claire Dellamar (Meg), André Eriksen (Colton "The Bull" Snyder), Nikola Kent (Oswald), Lucy Chappell (Jenny), and Olja Hrustic (CDC Official) Directed by Joe Lynch.

Review: 

"That’s what Mayhem is all about, it’s a battle against passive aggression. Everybody wants to discuss when they should just say no and just say that they don’t like this! Why do we have to side-bar everything? Why do we have to have another meeting? Because people’s voices might get raised? Someone’s feelings might get hurt? No one wants to get anyone’s feelings hurt anymore because someone will sue. That’s the problem with the corporate world. It’s this serpent eating its tail, because no one can be honest and everyone will sue. It’s such a deadening situation where no one can be their true selves. And part of directing is being able to be yourself, it’s your vision, it’s your voice!"

It only seems right to close things out with a fresh face. Joe Lynch initially started out as a child actor on Long Island but found himself interested in making films by the time he was studying at Syracuse University in the late 1990s. With a visual style described as being influenced by films such as "Evil Dead II, Goodfellas, and Raising Arizona way too many times as a kid", he graduated with a bachelor's degree in visual and performing arts and had a few student short films make the festival circuit. Lynch directed music videos for a variety of groups before becoming a feature director with Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007), which had a brief horror festival run before being released on DVD. Further efforts for films include Chillerama [2011] (directing a segment), Knights of Badassdom [2013] (a movie he disowned), and Everly [2014]. The script was written by Matias Caruso. Lynch had plenty of experience with corporate irritation, noting his experience trying to do anthology project to do videos that ran into plenty of hassles. The movie was shot in Serbia due to the country giving the filmmakers the proper amount of days they needed to shoot (25, which compared well to the 15 offered by Pittsburgh and 18 by Vancouver). The film was released in a few theaters and on "VOD and digital HD", and, well, I found it on a DVD pack that seemed promising, so why not?*

Sure, there have been a few action horror movies involving boatloads of crazed lunacy in a building. A cursory glance shows a few movies involving a fight to survive, whether that was Mean Guns [1997] (fight to the death for cash between killers), The Tournament [2009] (rich people watching others kill for sport), or The Belko Experiment [2016] (workers locked in a building told to start killing each other). Here you get one involving a virus that gets in your head and turns your impulses into a thing that may be a worthy killing machine, albeit one that makes sure to say the attacker isn't liable for their actions. I imagine there has also been at least one movie about fighting to the top of a building. But there is something infectious about the way the movie maneuvers through 86 minutes of a few thrills within moments of delirious execution at the office. The horrors of being in a crappy job that degrades one soul probably does go hand in hand with the horrors of people wanting to act their impulses to kick the crap out of you, to put it mildly. In that sense, it is a crowd pleaser for a handful of moments in terms of quick cuts to the action and a few fun lines, even if it likes the voice over perhaps a bit too many times. Yeun (best known at the time for his work on The Walking Dead*) does make for a solid lead to hold it together in wavering action status, one trying to balance the impulses that come with office politics and wanting to find a way out of being a drone off the old block. Weaving makes for a worthy pairing with Yuen in energy that bounce off each other in mutually assured destruction (of others), charming but convincing in being ready to handle whatever happens in the movie with nail guns and fists. Brand and others get their moments of making corporate stooges a bit more unnerving when poised to actually use violence beyond the usual corporate twist-and-turning, which works out for a few chuckles (mostly highlighted by Chikezie). At least the ending has a few chuckles in the idea of a business-mandated push to try and cure the virus (hey, this was made in 2017), although it probably is a bit routine in the actual endpoint (and a bit inevitable). In general, Mayhem has a few entertaining moments seeing the horrors of the corporate world go upside down for a few punches that might make for a worthwhile recommendation.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*Unusually, you can thank The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs for this double-header coming to fruition, as I eyed a "double feature DVD" that had a disc of this film and Suitable Flesh. So one spends a little over two hours each watching a movie that happens to have little segments of Briggs making commentary on the film. Honestly, I don't actually watch the Drive-in because I'm not much of a streaming service (as available on...Shudder) person or a live show guy, but it does sound like something cool to see around.

*What's that show?