Shudder Saturday: Mayhem (2017)

The second film in a short space of time to focus on a bout of extreme violence in an office environment (the other being The Belko Experiment), Mayhem may have suffered thanks to the timing of its release. Maybe. It also may have suffered due to the fact that not many people found it all that enjoyable. Once again, I find myself in the minority.

Steven Yeun is Derek Cho an ambitious white collar worker in your standard dog-eat-dog corporate environment. His day starts off badly (he can't find his favourite coffee cup), becomes slightly worse with a meeting that he takes in his stride as someone (Melanie, played by Samara Weaving) desperately tries to save their home from foreclosure, and then he is thrown under a bus by a colleague, which leads to him being sacked and removed from the building. Well, due to be removed from the building. That has to be delayed when the entire building is placed under quarantine, due to the presence of a virus that causes people to act unashamedly on their baser urges. This gives Derek the time, and necessary attitude, to try and make his way up to the boardroom and win back his job.

Written by Matias Caruso and directed by Joe Lynch, Mayhem is a hugely entertaining mix of workplace tensions and cathartic violence. The effect of the virus may not be quite what you expect, especially when compared to the over the top opening sequence that explains how it changes people, but all of the decisions made work in favour of a better story, and lead characters that are easier to root for than mindless psychopaths. Despite the film being set in a densely-populated office building, the plot only makes use of a core group of characters, and most of the people who end up the most bruised and bloodied (and murder death killed) are the ones that we strongly dislike from their earliest appearances onscreen. There's a lot of madness shown going on in the background, however, and plentiful doses of pain and bloodshed.

Yeun is great in the lead role, helped by the script that allows him to also narrate exposition and notes of his own failings, and Weaving gives another very likable turn, initially opposed to Yeun and quickly realising that it is best for them to work together. Caroline Chikezie is the one who ruins Yeun's life, Steven Brand is the big boss man, Dallas Roberts is the man sent in to meet people when it is time for their tenure with the company to end,  and Kerry Fox is a senior board member. All of them are amusingly easy to loathe, each one for a slightly different reason, although it all amounts to self-preservation in a corporate environment.

I really enjoyed this. It was a lot funnier than I expected it to be, Yeun and Weaving are a big plus in their main roles, and it strikes just the right balance between satire and visceral thrills. Some may dislike it because it doesn't have enough of the titular noun, some may dislike it in (unfair) comparison to The Belko Experiment, and some may just dislike it because, well, individual taste is subjective, of course. I hope a few others check it out, and maybe one or two of them will agree with my minority opinion.

8/10

You can buy Mayhem here.
Americans can buy the movie here.