The Belko Experiment is...an action/horror, I guess? written by James Gunn, directed by Greg McLean (he of Wolf Creek fame) and starring Tony Goldwyn, John Gallagher Jr, Adria Arjona, Michael Rooker, David Dastmalchian, John C. McGinley, Melonie Diaz, and Owain Yeoman (and lots more; it's a big cast).
On an otherwise normal day working for the Belko Corporation, which does...something involving international somethings?...the employees discover new, heavily armed, very taciturn security forces checking their cars, and all of the local employees (this building is in a remote location in Bogatá) sent home. They are quickly told that they need to kill two people, or else. At first everyone assumes this is a prank, and then impenetrable metal shutters seal them in. The COO, Barry (Goldwyn) assures everyone that it's fine, probably someone hacked into the security and is fucking with them, and the four of their heads explode.
All Belko employees have a "tracker" implanted in the back of their heads, and whoever is doing this has cameras everywhere, so removing said bombs is not an option. And then the next "task": Kill thirty people in thirty minutes, or sixty people get their heads popped (there are 76 people in the building at this point).
From there everything descends into chaos and horror, as some people, including Barry (who is former Special Forces), decide to comply with the order, while others, including our most prominent POV character Mike (Gallagher Jr) refuses to take part in violence even if it does mean more people die. They come up one person shy of the target, and so most of the rest of the employees go pop, and the remained dozen or so have one final task: whoever kills the most people gets to live.
One thing that James Gunn is good at (he also produced, and so while he didn't direct this movie you can very much see his creative influence) is handling large casts. He also excels at making you sympathize with people doing terrible things (or even things doing terrible things; see also The Suicide Squad). While Mike is our protagonist, more or less, we also spend a great deal of time with new hire Dany (Diaz), Mike's girlfriend Leandra (Arjona), and hapless family man Terry (Yeoman). All of these people are killed off by the end, and while some of them get death scenes with some gravitas, poor Dany just gets a bullet to the head so quick that even she doesn't have time to react.
The movie ends with Mike as the only survivor, and he manages to neatly turn the tables on the soldiers and "scientists" (including Gunn staple Gregg Henry) running this, only for the camera to pull back and reveal many other such sites and begin "phase two." I go round and round about whether that ending makes a great deal of sense and where a hypothetical sequel could go, but actually I think it plays into the same kind of nihilistic abandon that we see in Cube - you can't figure out what the "powers that be" really want to achieve, because they might not know themselves. You can play by the rules or you can stick to your guns, or you can try to get off the wheel, little hamster, but the end result is the same: violence, death, trauma.
That's bleak, but it's a bleak movie. It's undercut with Gunn's trademark humor (the movie was advertised with a series of claymation shorts that were even bloodier than the actual film), but to me one of the most poignant moments is the last exchange between Barry and Mike before Mike beats his head in with a tape dispenser: "You didn't make a difference." "Neither did you."
Performances are good; I came away wanting to know more about most of the characters. Gallagher Jr.'s Mike Milch is a good everyman, and I actually like Tony Goldwyn as a secret badass; he reads as capably violent but not holding on to that part of his life (unlike McGinley's Wendell, who very much seems to enjoy slaughtering his coworkers with a goddamn meat cleaver). I was surprised how fast we lost Rooker and Dastmalchian, but actually, as I think about it, McLean's other movies that I've seen (Wolf Creek and Rogue) play pretty fast and loose with survival expectations, too.
Overall it's a solid thriller/horror...thing, and defies categorization, which is always a plus in my book.
My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium
Next up: Candyman
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