The Belko Experiment (2017)

In Frank Darabont's 2007 adaptation of Stephen King's sci-fi horror novella, The Mist, four of the primary protagonists gather in a storage room and discuss their diverging philosophies on human nature. Alone on the optimistic side is maternal teacher Amanda Dumfries (Laurie Holden), who rejects the notion that more than a few people will turn to the guidance of the conspicuously deranged, Bible-belt doomsayer, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden). "People are basically good," she insists, "decent. My God, David, we're a civilized society." Movie-poster artist David Drayton's (Thomas Jane) viewpoint, on the other hand, is far more pragmatic and pessimistic. "Sure, as long as the machines are working and you can dial 911, but you take those things away, you throw people in the dark, you scare the shit out of them, no more rules, you'll see how primitive they get." On board with that theory are Dan Miller (Jeffrey DeMunn) and assistant manager Ollie Weeks (Toby Jones). "You scare people badly enough, you can get them to do anything," says Dan. "They'll turn to whoever promises a solution. Or whatever." When called upon by Amanda for backup, Ollie disappoints. "I wish I could. As a species, we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?"

One decade later, King's bleak worldview will be validated by the characters of James Gunn's The Belko Experiment. Smart, original, and harrowing, The Belko Experiment is an exhilarating, briskly paced bloodbath that skewers cubicle culture with a searing, piercingly honest examination of human nature and the no-holds-barred lengths people will go to survive, alleviated by a grim sense of humor that never threatens to detract from the gravity of the situation at hand. Similar to The Mist, the characters in this slasher horror are confined in a single setting by an unidentified threat and placed in a battle for survival, with one subset determined to find a way to escape while holding onto their morals, and another gradually reduced to their most primitive instincts, willing to forfeit morality and sacrifice their own fellow detainees in the hope of waking up to see another sunrise. However, unlike those trapped in that Maine supermarket, the employees of Belko Industries don't require the emergence of otherworldly, spidery, bloodsucking creatures for the vicious beasts lurking beneath the surface of their respectable exteriors to unveil themselves.

One early morning in Bogota, Colombia, the employees of Belko Industries, a non-profit organization that facilitates American companies in South America in the hiring of American workers, are getting ready for work like any other day. However, something about today feels askew: an unrecognizable group of security guards are turning away the local Columbian staff and hiding out in the hangar next door. Before unsettled employee Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.) can get any answers from solo security guard Evan Smith (James Earl), a mysterious masculine voice (Gregg Henry) appears on an intercom with a clear-cut command: within half an hour, two employees must be murdered. If they are not, consequences will be distributed. While the majority of employees are rattled by this bluntly delivered threat, many dismiss it as a prank from the higher-ups and laugh it off. Tensions rise, however, once the building is enclosed by metal shutters, locking all 80 employees inside. 

Once the deadline arrives and two lives have yet to be claimed, the heads of four employees explode from within, confirming the veracity of the voice's promise. As everyone devolves into panic and scurries for cover, believing that they're being shot at, Mike is the first to infer that the tracking devices implanted in the bases of their skulls, allegedly on account of kidnappings, must be equipped with explosives, and so runs to a bathroom to attempt to remove his with a box cutter. The voice, able to see Mike's method via cameras hidden in every room, gives Mike a countdown: if he doesn't put the knife down in 10 seconds, they will detonate his explosive. Unable to reach the chip, Mike relents. Soon after, the voice instructs them to kill 30 of their co-workers within two hours, otherwise twice as many will be killed indiscriminately. With the rule of "kill or be killed" firmly established, the employees begin to separate into two factions: one led by Mike, which resolves to figure out a way to escape without considering taking the lives of innocent people, and one led by COO Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn), which reverts to barbarism in the name of survival, turning their place of business into a literal bloodbath.

If the high concept of The Belko Experiment suggests the irrational, unmotivated, harrowing simplicity of a nightmare, that's because it sprang from one. Sometime in 2007, screenwriter James Gunn woke from a nightmare in which an office building was enclosed by metal walls and a voice on an intercom instructed employees to kill each other. Subsequently, Gunn began writing the screenplay centered around this nightmare. The straightforward plot efficiently establishes the personalities of the characters and relationships between them. By opting to commence the story on the day of the human experiment, Gunn and director Greg McLean permit themselves the opportunity to hit the ground running, wasting zero time on building intricate backstories. We aren't privy to the personal lives of these people outside the confines of the office building. We meet them on what is guaranteed to be the last day of all but one of their lives. Gunn takes a what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach, favoring the here and now as opposed to yesterday. He allows enough time before the experiment begins for his characters to breathe and uses dialogue to depict cheerful, identifiable interactions, thereby endearing them to his audience in a short timeframe. Without getting to know any of these people on an intimate level, we quickly come to care about them because they feel like real people deceived into expecting yet another ordinary, likely unrewarding day at their shared job.

By isolating his characters in a confined single setting throughout the entirety of his story, Gunn explores the insidious ways in which the crippling power of fear and threat of death can reduce even the most upstanding, seemingly passive individuals to their most barbaric impulses, driven by the primal desire for life. As communicated by David Drayton, when weak-minded people are thrown headfirst into the dark and terrified out of their wits, they will selfishly resort to whatever means necessary to strengthen the chances of their own survival. Gunn pushes that pessimistic perspective to the uppermost without wallowing in nihilism, acknowledging that, while human beings are a fundamentally selfish species, many possess the courage to maintain their grip on morality and sanity. He displays a sliver of hope for the resilience of mankind.

The setup is breathlessly terrifying, placing the characters and audience simultaneously in a claustrophobic and morally excruciating dilemma without warning or explanation. The comfortingly bland appearance of an unremarkable workday is obliterated at once by the ear-piercing feedback of an intercom, followed by an unfamiliar, robotic voice casually demanding the mass executions of random, innocent co-workers in a narrow timeframe. As a recently arrived woman turns around to promptly make her way toward the entrance, a series of metal shutters materializes one by one in front of every last door and window. The hyperventilation of Dani Wilkins (Melonie Diaz), a new hire thrust in the worst first day imaginable, transfers through the screen. As a defense mechanism, some employees write the scenario off as a joke. Before the introduction of the voice is made, Gunn scatters subtly ominous details over the office grind to put us on edge from the jump: local Columbian employees being sent home at the gate, unfamiliar security guards hiding in a hangar next to the building, a child in a skull mask staring at Mike as he sits in his car en route to work. He lets us know early on that his characters are unknowingly driving straight into the bowels of Hell, gussied up in the comforting drabness of their workplace. Biding their time for the shocking commencement of the slaughter, Gunn and McLean impregnate the dull air with a suffocating degree of paranoia.

The Belko Experiment isn't the first horror movie to utilize a simple, everyday setting as a microcosm for human behavior and transform it into a fortress of destruction, whether it be the abandoned farmhouse in Night of the Living Dead or the grocery store in The Mist. Nonetheless, I'm a sucker for an inventive horror movie setting, and Gunn may have literally dreamed up the most original and subversive ever transferred from the mind to the page. The titular building in which the characters work is the perfect backdrop for the carnage candy that ensues. On the surface, an office building is one of the dullest known to man, a symbol of professionalism and sterility occupied five days a week by white-collar citizens to earn a living and feel their deep-seated passions melting away a little more each day. In the mind of Gunn and the hands of McLean, it curdles quickly into a contained jungle in which the inner human beast is permitted to roam free and paint the white walls in the crimson of fellow human entrails. 

The Belko building itself is naturally expansive, yet because the characters are entrapped within, it becomes claustrophobic. Because it's equipped with unlimited hiding places, the building grants its inhabitants the ability to get creative in taking evasive action, as exploited consistently and intelligently by Dani. However, Gunn utilizes the spaciousness of the lobby as an ideal locale for mass executions in which employees are dragged out of a corner at random, placed on their knees, and shot in the back of the head in a heart-rending evocation of the Nazis' original method of genocide against Jews in Eastern Europe. One employee, so desperate to avoid being caught, takes shelter in a personal freezer in his office. McLean uses stairwells creatively, displaying a dual purpose for characters to run for their lives or be led like lambs to their slaughter. Like a classic haunted house or the Bates Motel, Belko Industries is located in the middle of nowhere, isolated from any highways where passing cars would potentially notice the banners being held over the roof requesting help. 

To illustrate the filmmakers' compassion for their powerless characters, cinematographer Luis David Sansas uses extreme close-ups of the actors' faces to accentuate their feelings of psychological anguish, tenderness, desperation, and resignation, strengthening our bond to the characters and our empathy for their nightmarish circumstances. Once pandemonium breaks out and the characters are plunged into the darkness, Sansas illuminates the stairwell in blood-red to symbolize their descent into Hell. Possibly the most heartbreaking shot comes in the form of a close-up of the eyes of supervisor Helena Barton (Silvia de Dios) closing in resignation to an impending, nonnegotiable bullet to the back of her head. Subsequently, following a life-saving maneuver by Dani, the lights to the building are abruptly shut off, necessitating the remaining employees to scatter for cover while the gunmen shoot blindly at them in pitch blackness, creating a spectacle of purposefully inchoate chaos.

The gore is excessive without ever feeling disgustingly exploitative. Gunn imagines two separate methods of violence for the two groups of antagonists. For the so-called social scientists on the outside, they merely flip a switch and detonate the explosives implanted in the skulls of employees at random; for the "kill" group inside, Gunn exhibits more variety and creativity, turning to kitchen utensils, a meat cleaver, a fire axe, a wrench, guns, a Molotov cocktail, and, saving the most unconventional for last, a tape dispenser. Adding to the heart-pounding tension is the time limits placed on the employees, and if they fail to meet their deadlines, heads will implode and blood will splatter onto the walls behind them. Editor Julia Wong places the emphasis on the psychological suffering over the grisly details of the executions. Especially in moments where the voice returns to issue the next lethal instruction, she cuts to reaction shots of the employees to convey their panic, terror, and cluelessness. Understanding the visceral appeal of the slasher subgenre, Wong and Sansas provide occasional close-ups of the back of bloody head wounds, but they decide against lingering thereon. 

The kills are instantaneous and gruesome, but strikingly painless. The most show-stopping and prolonged one, however, is reserved for the most deserving character, "pin-eyed pervert" Wendell Dukes (John C. McGinley). After years of being sexually harassed from across her office by Wendell, Leandra Florez (Adria Arjona) is finally permitted the opportunity to unleash her pent-up disdain in the form of a fire axe, thrusting its blade in and out of his stabbable face repeatedly. Sansas focuses his camera mainly on Arjona's thrusting movements, inviting us to feel the rage that's been welling inside of Leandra, but to satiate the gorehounds, Wong cuts to a few fist-pumping glimpses of the blade cutting into the center of Wendell's face. Together, their approach to the violence is restrained yet cathartic, spotlighting the aftermath of corpses sprawled on the floors, bathed in their own blood. When a bullet is fired into the back of a victim's skull, Wong cuts away at the moment of impact. When an explosive is detonated, a pop will sound, accompanied by a squirt of blood on the wall behind the victim, who will then collapse to the floor. McLean relies on the sound of gunshots, intermingled with the collapsing of random, unidentifiable bodies, to illustrate the arbitrariness of the carnage unfolding. As if to allow the audience oases of tranquility, Wong sporadically cuts to exterior shots of the titular building, highlighting its aura of isolation and the overcast sky above. 

After subverting the good-natured, sympathetic persona he projected in 10 Cloverfield Lane with his delightfully sadistic performance as the relentless, arrow-slinging serial killer in Hush, John Gallagher Jr. returns to his former nature in his first leading role in The Belko Experiment. As Mike Milch, Gallagher provides the moral compass in a wasteland of intensifying human savagery and represents the most pure-hearted and rational that humankind has to offer. Mike recognizes the severity of the situation quicker than almost any of his colleagues, taking the threat seriously enough to recommend taking the stairs instead of the elevator. While Barry and his designated gang of followers resolve to forfeit their conscience and give in to their "new god's" demands, Mike strategizes the safest methods for overcoming the obstacles set before them while steadfastly refusing to compromise on his morality. He's smart enough to know that not only would taking the life of an innocent person be immoral, but pointless for two reasons: (1) even if he does kill some of his co-workers, he could still be killed himself at the flip of a switch, and (2) if he manages to make it out alive, he would have to live with the memory of what he did to achieve that dubious victory for the rest of his life. When pushed over the edge, however, and robbed of the most important person in his life, Mike develops a righteous craving for vengeance, unleashing his inner murderer against the right adversary, thereby retaining our rooting interest. 

Barry Norris represents the opposite side of the same coin as Mike. Tony Goldwyn is an ideal choice for this role, having portrayed a similar character in the remake of The Last House on the Left. Like Barry, John Collingwood is an inherently benevolent husband and father who makes an honest living assisting the lives of others. All that goes out the window when he and his wife discover their teenage daughter sprawled on the porch, caked in mud after having been sexually assaulted and left for dead by the people they've just permitted to spend the rainy night in their lake house. Now, fueled by a rage he'd never felt beforehand, the good doctor re-breaks the nose of one of the men he just stitched up hours earlier, mangles his hand in the garbage disposal, and slams the clawed end of a hammer into the back of his skull. That's before he paralyzes his daughter's rapist from the neck down and explodes his head in an open microwave. While that role gave Goldwyn experience in playing good men driven to barbaric acts in pursuit of revenge and survival, here's the difference: as John, Goldwyn remained a hero, purging his fury on the real antagonists who assaulted his daughter and murdered her best friend; as Barry, he's far less sympathetic, systematically robbing the lives of his own colleagues and friends in the selfish hope of saving himself from an identical fate.

In retrospect, Goldwyn is performing phenomenal work in Belko, presenting Barry as a fundamentally decent man who strives to maintain his sanity and conscience in the midst of an impossible ordeal, but rather quickly devolves into barbarism in the name of personal survival and love for his family. "My wife and kids need me. I don't know what they'll do without me," Barry rationalizes, without considering the psychological consequences of returning home to them with bloody hands that could never be washed clean. Due to the commitment of Goldwyn's acting and intimate empathy of Sansas' camerawork, Barry is never reduced to a cartoonish, bloodthirsty, foaming-at-the-mouth villain. Goldwyn's tortured visage provides a crystal-clear window into his inner turmoil. You can physically see him wrestling with his conscience, understanding that what he's doing is wrong and praying for the strength to pull the trigger regardless. Barry hates what he's instructed to do, but feels compelled to comply nonetheless. There's no excuse for the acts of barbarity he carries out, but what's most astonishing about Goldwyn's portrayal is how his actions remain grounded in horrifyingly plausible and sickeningly relatable humanity. His anger stems not from hatred toward his victims, but self-loathing and inescapable desperation. 

Wendell, on the other hand, is the closest Gunn comes to writing a more overt villain, and McLean hit the jackpot in casting John McGinley for such a role. From the start, McGinley embraces the lunacy of his character, presenting Wendell as an unhinged, borderline delusional creep whose lecherous gazes border on sexual harassment. He isn't inherently evil, but one gets the sense this human experiment comes to serve as an outlet for the pent-up sexual frustration and homicidal anger lurking beneath the surface. McGinley, whose presence is fitting considering he played one of the Bobs in Mike Judge's more comical takedown of cubicle culture in Office Space, counterbalances Wendell's unsettling, pedophiliac smiles and delusions of reciprocated flirtation with an oddball charisma that makes him the type of madman one loves to loathe. 

As Mike's sort-of-secret girlfriend, Adria Arjona oozes sex appeal and ferocity in equal measure. She displays earnest care for Mike and evinces touching chemistry with Gallagher which instills their relationship with warmth and their final scene together with unexpected tragedy. Arjona is also given the most concisely cynical line of plain-spoken social commentary in Gunn's script: "At the end of the day, people are out for themselves." 

The supporting characters invest The Belko Experiment with a mixture of poignancy and breath-enabling flippancy. While she may come across as useless at first glance, Dani is, in some ways, the smartest character. Once the game begins, Dani, smart and cautious enough to know better than to trust her new co-workers, opts for evasive action, hiding in any corner she can squeeze herself into. In that sense, she shares a kinship with Jordana Brewster's Chrissie from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and like the master evader before her, Dani has enough of a heart to aid her co-workers in their survival. When she stumbles upon the grotesque sight of Barry and his loyalists systematically executing people in the lobby, she races back to the basement where she was hiding and flips off every switch until the lights go out, granting survivors the opportunity to escape. Dani is so clever at hiding that when she commits one, fatally thoughtless error, the result is swift, ironic, and upsetting. Peggy Displasia (Rusty Schwimmer) and Keith McLure (Josh Brener) share a lighthearted exchange over the latter's escaped spider which suggests a long-term affectionate relationship. Evan, the sole security guard, is traumatized by the death of a friend with whom he started working at Belko at the same time, but his grief doesn't blind him from seeing through Barry's deceptive gestures of kindness. Much like how Mike refuses to relinquish his morality, Evan just as ferociously refuses to relinquish the keys to the armory, going as far as to offer his resignation in response to Barry's threatening tone. Terry Winters (Owain Yeoman), Mike's pathetically gregarious and spineless friend, exhibits vulnerability and susceptibility to manipulation in a way that evokes Nazism in his willingness to blindly follow orders, even if it means forfeiting his conscience. Terry is so desperate for approval from his self-appointed commanding officer that when his own friend begs him to hand over his gun, he nearly immediately snitches on him to earn points for his loyalty.

Assuredly under the recommendation of Gunn, McLean assigned the comic-relief role of Marty Espenscheid to his younger brother, Sean, who alleviates the literal breathtaking tension with a dash of humor owing to a hippie-like attitude. When the threat is first announced, Marty dismisses it as a psychological test, raising a middle finger to the intended fear with a calm disinterest sustained by a comforting blunt, which he feels no qualms about smoking in the bathroom. Once his assumption literally blows up in his face, Marty reveals himself as somewhat of a conspiracy theorist, deducing that a chemical in the company's water cooler could be stimulating a lust for murder and the key to escaping is the unactivated explosives from the skulls of his slain comrades. Or perhaps these are just methods by which he can gain some tenuous measure of control. As grim and hopeless as circumstances seem, Marty strains to keep up a positive attitude, losing his temper at reality checks that he dismisses as "negative thinking." The solutions he proposes may sound illogical, but the Gunn brothers treat them -- and Marty as a character -- with consideration, painting him as someone for whom optimism is the only shred of sanity he has left. 

Tyler Bates, the frequent composer of Rob Zombie's horror films, composes the official score for The Belko Experiment, but McLean's more distinctive and memorable application of music manifests in Spanish renditions of American songs that bestow the movie with a Columbian flavor. Sequences of horror and disorientation, such as when Barry's team rounds up their co-workers in the lobby, are starkly juxtaposed with a soothing operatic melody and slow motion. Before the ensuing mass executions commence, McLean incorporates the diegetic tune of "California Dreamin'" by Gil Cerezo, adding a sliver of peace and positivity to combat the tearful pleading, screaming, and gunshots. "I Will Survive" by Jose Prieto, accompanied by slow motion of the employees entering the building, smiling as they greet one another, fosters a deceptively upbeat atmosphere while slyly foreshadowing their impending battle for survival. 

Gunn makes the wise decision to keep the exposition as to the titular experiment to a minimum, leaving it up to Mike to decipher its motivation. Once the metal shutters rise and the warm beams of sunlight shine through the oversized windows, Gunn confirms his protagonist's theory of a human experiment without bombarding him or the viewer with a surfeit of exposition. When the owner of the voice inevitably unveils his identity, McLean uses light, shadow, and up-close camerawork to make Gregg Henry's figurative unmasking properly climactic. All we learn about this man is that he's the leader of a group of social scientists seeking to understand human nature unencumbered by "conventional concepts." Gunn offers no explanations regarding his callous indifference to human life nor does he provide him with a name, referring to him merely as "The Voice." The closest we come to deciphering an internal motivation is a scar on the right side of Henry's face, suggesting he was burned in a fire and has since developed a reinvigorated appreciation for life. Like John Kramer, he now makes it his life mission to put people in life-or-death situations to test their own gratitude for the luxury of life. Gunn incorporates a cleverly concealed twist that exhibits a cunning and resourceful dimension to Mike while leaving his outcome uncertain. In the end, he may be physically free, but psychologically, he is bound to forever remain a prisoner of this inhumane experiment, emotionally scarred, confused, and alone. 

On Saturday, February 25, 2017, I saw Get Out for the first time in theaters. I had been excited to see it because, at the time, it held a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a nearly nonexistent rarity for a horror film. By the time I emerged from the screening, I had experienced the most original, exhilarating, galvanizing horror film in quite some time. The next two Saturdays in a row, I returned to watch it again, and each time was as delightful as the last. After the third week, I decided to give Get Out a rest and see a new original horror film that wasn't enjoying the same level of critical appreciation. I'll never forget the first time I saw The Belko Experiment in theaters, gasping at the sight and slamming of the metal shutters. But the moment that sticks with me the most eight years later is when Leandra slams the fire axe repeatedly into Wendell's face, and I muttered to myself, "And I thought Get Out was a good horror movie." How spoiled I felt to have had the privilege to watch two of the greatest horror films of 2017 back to back in the span of one month.

8.1/10