“Corporate Retreat” might be the worst movie of the year, not because it’s unpleasant, cliched, and gory, too, but because its filmmakers seem to have as little regard for their audience as they do for their craft. It’s a goofy and often bitter post-torture porn horror comedy about a company team-building exercise that goes horribly wrong after a group of innocent employees is kidnapped and forced to complete a series of deadly escape room-ish challenges.
It’s also dreary, underlit, and carelessly blocked and edited throughout. The filmmakers don’t even deliver convincing scares, especially not when cheap-looking makeup and computer effects turn this lazy “Saw”-meets-“Ready or Not” mashup into a dismal bloodbath.
The movie begins with some Tarantinian swagger as ‘60s pop/surf guitar music plays and a group of jaded and understandably testy corporate employees pulls up to the secluded Phoenix Corporate Retreat. They’re joined by their company’s obnoxious lawyer Cliff (Elias Kacavas), his plucky but largely undeveloped girlfriend Ginger (Odeya Rush), and a pair of brainwashed spa employees, Lola and Amber (Sasha Lane and Zion Moreno).
Then the movie shifts to a lower gear and stays there as it trudges through a checklist of formulaic plot contrivances and hackneyed dialogue exchanges that completely pre-empt this blustery but mostly low-energy programmer. Nobody’s character develops in even the most superficial ways, and there’s not much in the way of memorable gore, not even when eyes are gouged out with spoons or an antidote to poison is improvised with a MacGyver-style cocktail that includes Drano, vinegar, and melted gold jewelry. I wanted to laugh with this movie, but I was not given much encouragement.
The group’s mandatory wellness journey goes off the rails soon enough, even if “Corporate Retreat” drags until the (early) arrival of the company’s vindictive ex-president and founder, Arthur (Alan Ruck), who has paid Lola and Amber to torture his ex-employees. Ruck plays a delusional sadist, so it’s unsurprising that he’s the only performer who gets to have fun on screen. He’s also one of the few performers who approach his role with some range and without a strong need for direction.
Ruck’s character is also obnoxious enough to make you want to root against him. The same can’t be said for any of the other major characters, not even the prefab final girl Ginger, who’s ostensibly appealing because she’s bold enough to tell off Arthur when the others won’t. Her dialogue is so stiff and rote, though, making it even harder to overlook the general indifference with which Rush is filmed and pumped up as the movie’s de facto savior.
Most of the other ensemble cast members do their best with what little they have to work with, gritting their teeth and smirking as if their characters’ lives depend on it. Or that’s the idea, at least. Most of Arthur’s bloody and increasingly tiresome challenges lack suspense or just the credible suggestion that things could get worse for Ginger and the gang if they fail to complete a task. It’s not the ensemble’s fault, in other words, that you’re laughing at the movie when one character scolds Ginger after she baits Arthur: “You just let the lion into the den.” That line’s pretty bad, but the actor’s stiff delivery and the scene’s tossed-off presentation are somehow even more numbing.
You know there’s something wrong with your horror movie when the most upsetting part of a scene involving ocular torture is its sheer duration. Nothing about this movie’s violence, from the acts it suggests to the way they’re presented, strikes a nerve, since it’s often doled out without energy or relish. Even Lucio Fulci’s biggest fans won’t get much from these grisly scenes since there’s not only not much blood on screen, but also not much escalating tension either.
So many creative decisions in “Corporate Retreat” seem to be placeholders that inexplicably made the final cut anyway, like the eyeroll-inducing use of “Ride of the Valkyries” to announce Arthur’s unwelcome arrival or the careless way that most characters enter and then exit the movie. Amateurish filmmaking isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, but it’s hard to be forgiving when so many choices make the movie harder to watch, let alone enjoy. How are we supposed to focus on what’s happening in the frame when the camera shakes so much, or whenever the frame cuts off certain details, like the actors’ features, for no good reason?
Eventually, these many glaring distractions add up and make one feel resentful, especially given how much sporadic fun it is to watch Ruck play an unlovable villain. Nothing else in “Corporate Retreat” enhances our enjoyment, which only sounds hyperbolic until you’ve gone through this underwhelming gauntlet yourself.
As far as punishing experiences go, I can’t recommend it.
