FrightFest

8/10 - Manic fun, but shows its limited budget at times.

I think it was silly.
The acting was mediocre.
And the concept is hardly original.
Duane Swiercznski's action crime novel 'Severance Package' (yet to be filmed) is far superior.

Another fun movie and I thought the leads were very good, while the mix of humour and action setpieces kept it ticking along after the relatively lengthy set-up at the start. Maybe it would also have benefitted from a few more humorous interludes featuring some other characters to add a little more variety. 7.5 / 10

For anyone who's ever wanted to set fire to their office and dance in the ashes (which is probably anyone who's worked in an office environment, at one time or another), this film delivers. Think Office Space meets The Raid. Perfectly cast, funny and cathartic. Steven Yeun was a great choice for the lead role. The visuals are a riot of colour and as always, Steve Moore delivers a killer score. It's not subtle, but it's a ton of fun. 8/10

I really wanted to like this more, it was fun, gory, had a good cast, and Joe Lynch did a great Q&A.

But, it just didn't really grab me, something was just a bit off about the tone of it. It was too cartoony, the basic concept of the virus was just a bit stupid and half baked. I never for a second felt any sense of threat for the main characters, or doubted that they would get to the top of the building and achieve their aim. It was like a video game where each level has a smart mouthed corporate arsehole end of level boss that you have to kill in a gory way, crossed with an episode of Suits where they endlessly quote meaningless case names, account memorandums etc. in a way that we're supposed to think is cool even though we don't know what the hell they're about.

I did enjoy it, but it was all a bit shallow and unsatisfying.

Well directed, pretty good performances (Samara Weaving was terrific, I loved the line about her three favourite bands), lots of manic action, entertaining enough while it lasts... but I just didn't connect with it at all.

The plot is so shallow, with the "virus" - so wildly inconsistent in its effects - just a thin excuse to set off the mayhem. All that stuff Joe Lynch said about the misery of the office environment, wanting to kill your boss... of course it's not intended as true satire, but it didn't need to be quite such a simplistic caricature, where simply being a man in a suit automatically means you're a cold-hearted, coke-snorting, money-grabbing bastard.

Much like Adam Green's Hatchet appearance, Lynch's Q&A won the film an extra one-and-a-half stars it really didn't deserve.

It feels cartoonish and videogame-like throughout, in the same way that Lynch's previous film Everly did, but here it focusses on humour more than horror. There's not much gore: the violence tends to be a slapstick sort, and the film generally cuts away just before the bloody demises of the villains, which is a shame from a director who made his name on Wrong Turn 2. Still a fun, throwaway film to watch, that has a propulsive energy and almost non-stop action to keep up a constant level of interest. I don't know how it would stand up to a rewatch.

After Adam Green I don't want to get blurred too much by nice guy film makers and give films more credit than they deserve. Watched Mayham and although I liked Joe Lynch as a person I thought he couldn't deliver. The virus story and character behaviour made no sense, even in this ridiculous setting and brawl fight scenes were repetitive and boring. His depiction of corporate America (even the world) is outdated and cliché driven with the golf club swinging coke head - that was a more an 80s image. Today's corperate Tech is all about petting your employees (usually a bunch of overpaid nerds) so you don't lose them to the competition, healthy living, political correctness, climbing mountains and hive mind collective thinking a la Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. - at least from my experience.