Welcome to the Cutting Room

I tried something a little different for this entry; I gave a second chance to a movie I didn’t particularly care for the first time around. My spouse and I were looking for something to do on a day off, and decided to take in some questionable cinema (in public). We took our seats and were soon joined by a squad of rowdy teens who plopped themselves down a few rows behind. It may have been the absurdity of the movie, it may have been the sugary snacks I was consuming, it could have been the not insignificant amount of THC meandering around our collective unconsciousness or all of the above; we had a moment. The rambunctious teens ran a line of commentary à la MST3K throughout the movie and we were losing it. It was WONDERFUL. The commentary was more memorable than the movie itself. It was a wonderful evening. If nothing else, this rewatch gave me a chance to watch the movie through a less goofy lens. It’s not supposed to be funny after all.
Plot-wise, “The Belko Experiment” is a bottle episode that follows a mysterious non-profit organization which may or may not be using its employees as lab animals (spoiler alert, no spoiler alert needed). Corporate… Colombia, am I right? For some reason that never becomes clear only those who were brought into the country on work visas (ohhh now I get it) are targets of the eponymous experiment.

We’re introduced to the usual suspects – a family man, a couple involved in torrid office romance, a lech, a new girl who probably shouldn’t have started that day, some gruff but goodhearted maintenance men (Michael Rooker and David Dastmalchian; you know you’re going to have a good time when you see them), and additional cliché office folk. We learn that the office is being SURVEILLED by a shadowy paramilitary force that locks down the Belko building, trapping the employees within. We also learn that Belko has been MICROCHIPPING their visa’d employees to “AVOID TRAFFICKING.” Never the locals, they’ll be FINE and are IMMUNE to trafficking. How that wasn’t enough of a red flag for any of these folks I will never know, but thankfully I’ve never worked an office job. Over the PA we hear a booming voice commanding the Belko employees to kill two coworkers within a set amount of time. We watch employees go through every stage of grief until HEADS start popping. Why?! Probably because of the TRACKER you LET your EMPLOYER install in YOUR BODY. You literally could not pay me enough. I’ve seen the movies.

The Booming Voice tells the beleaguered employees that they need to kill 30 people in 2 hours or they will kill 60 by tracker explosion. As usually happens in movies like these, we get to see how people try to survive when they think they’re going to die; the good, the bad, and the sociopathic. Higher-ups in the company start playing god and ranking how valuable each human life is (I have never even met social commentary how dare you). Of course we must separate out the parents of young children (eliciting an “oh fuck all the way off” from me, dear reader) because their lives are the most meaningful. Then, those running the show decide to kill everyone over 60 because they’ve probably had a good run or something (this seems like the worst place to work). After a whoppingly low number of seniors are wasted, the COO decides to start shooting people at random because he’s the COO, BUT it’s not enough. The Belkans are ONE body short, all because SOMEONE didn’t make a metal-ass kill with a paper cutter blade (which are SO dull, and would SUCK to be hacked to death by). The Belkans then lose half of their peers and are told the person with the highest kill count by the end of however long wins! We see most of the major players duke it out until our “hero” emerges victorious/with a pulse and a super-sized helping of PTSD.

Finally, it seems like we’re about to get to the “why” of the movie, but NO. Why are they doing this experiment? GATHERING DATA. WHO is gathering data? SOME GUYS. and some… SOCIOLOGISTS. I don’t think they got that far when writing this. Wrapping up the movie we see that we’ve witnessed but one of dozens of experiments Belko, leaving the door wide open for sequels or maybe a PREQUEL so I can have some CLOSURE or something. The movie was fun. It was fine. I’d rate “The Belko Experiment” 2/5 without commentary (4/5 with).

As always, I recommend checking https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ for any triggers or things you don’t want to see before starting *any* horror movie.

All views expressed are my own, you don’t have to agree with them! I’m open to respectful discourse.

Feel free to leave any movie recommendations or anything you’d like to read a review of!