Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Aaron Fisher
Starring: Odeya Rush, Sasha Lane, Ashton Sanders, Alan Ruck, Zion Moreno, Rosanna Arquette
"What is this, an escape room?"
So asks a character of Corporate Retreat's setting, and they're right. Director Aaron Fisher's horror-comedy (or at least, I think it's supposed to be a comedy) rehashes the formula we recently saw in 2019's Escape Room and its sequel, that of a bunch of protagonists finding themselves at the mercy of a lunatic who traps them in a series of rooms and insists they perform specific tasks in order to progress. Of course, this idea goes back to the Saw franchise, and further back to 1997's Cube, and you might even trace it all the way back to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
The protagonists here are corporate co-workers who have been brought to a remote desert spa for a weekend of wellness and team-building. Also along for the ride is Ginger (Odeya Rush), who was duped into joining her boyfriend Cliff (Elias Kacavas) in the belief that they would be enjoying a romantic getaway. Ginger's relaxed reaction to her boyfriend's subterfuge is the first of several moments that will test your suspension of disbelief.
It turns out that everyone is here under false pretences. They have been lured by their company's ousted former CEO Arthur (Alan Ruck), who wants revenge for the backstabbing that resulted in him losing the company he founded. Dictating from a nearby RV, Arthur employs a pair of machine gun-wielding henchwomen - Amber (Zión Moreno) and Lola (Sasha Lane) - to force his former employees to complete a series of gory tasks, each of which results in one of their deaths. In classic Willy Wonka fashion, he hopes this will result in one survivor reaching "transcendence" at the end.
It's clear from the off that Ginger is the Charlie figure in this comparison, the outsider who isn't quite as awful as the rest of the characters. But Ginger is so barely sketched that there isn't enough to make her stand out as someone the audience can pin their hopes on.
The idea of a bunch of backstabbing co-workers being put through a Darwinian trial that forces them to turn on each other has much potential, but we never believe that any of these people have any kind of professional or personal relationship. There is no dynamic between any of them - they might as well be the strangers who are usually drawn together in this sort of setup. The sort of workplace satire we saw in Christopher Smith's 2006 horror-comedy Severance is notably absent here.
If you're looking for gnarly gore, there's plenty here, and the effects are quite impressive thanks to the employment of veteran makeup artist Gary J. Tunnicliffe. But as if to milk whatever portion of the budget went into these effects, we're forced to watch characters repeat the same acts of bloody self-harm one by one, which quickly tests our patience. None of Arthur's assigned tasks are particularly novel, and the only shock factor is that the group are so willing to go along with his mad plan. Amber and Lola appear as if they're struggling to hold their bulky weapons, yet nobody dares an attempt to disarm them. There is one laughably silly moment when a character is informed they are to be decapitated, and rather than running away they simply stand still to make it easier for Amber to swing a hefty sword at their neck.
The general air of laziness here can be summed up by the choice of needle drops, which includes such over-used tunes as Green Onions, Apache and even Ride of the Valkyries. Corporate Retreat can't even keep track of its own plot, with a character screaming "three people have been killed!" at a point in the movie when five people have actually been killed in front of her. I hope she's not the company's accountant.
Corporate Retreat is on US VOD from July 10th. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
