Corporate Retreat review
Retreat is what you’ll probably be wanting to do before too long.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Corporate Retreat
Directed by Aaron Fisher
Written by Aaron Fisher and Kerri Lee Romeo
Starring Odeya Rush, Elias Kacavas, Ashton Sanders, Tyler Alvarez, Kirby Johnson, Ellen Toland, Benjamin Norris and Alan Ruck
Corporate Retreat Review
The best way I can describe Corporate Retreat is to say that it’s what people who don’t watch horror movies think that horror movies are. That probably requires at least one more sentence to explain…but I’ll try to keep it as compact as possible. Corporate Retreat contains gore and violence seemingly solely for the sake of gore and violence. Horror fans know the difference between stories that use these effective tools to deepen or elevate themselves…and the ones that barely bother to build a story around them. This is the latter…even if it seems to think it’s the former.
Executives at a retreat found themselves held hostage to the whims of the madman who founded their company. I don’t need a second sentence to explain the plot of Corporate Retreat. But the movie thinks I do. It adds a character from outside the company to the retreat because it seems to understand that the personal vengeance put upon employees of a company we don’t work for may not connect with the viewer. But it doesn’t do anything interesting with the perspective. It’s like someone knew violence without connection was bad…but failed to make us connect with our window into it.
Alan Ruck plays the deposed and out of his mind founder and former CEO of the company. He’s very good here. Ruck bought into this ridiculous character and plays him for all the malevolence and misguided newfound spirituality he needed to. That’s about the only thing in Corporate Retreat that really works. Well…aside from some effective self-mutilation. But the violence here…it’s like the outsider character. The script knows it needs it…but it never understands why.
The team building exercises turned deadly games features seven stages. It’s all under the guise of spiritual enlightenment…the thing that Ruck’s character claims to have found following his company being stolen from him by this group of shockingly young executives. I shouldn’t frame it as a claim. He proves his mental illness is true when he joins the competition during the sixth stage. That would be the “eye removal” stage of spiritual enlightenment. This would be a good time to warn people with an aversion to eye related horror that Corporate Retreat features a long and visceral sequence involving multiple eye removals.
There’s also a heart removal, a beheading, multiple gunshots and plenty of other excessive violence to put into your own eye sockets. There’s just little to no reason for you to care about any of it. Whatever interest you might have in seeing who makes it through each wave of pain is nullified by not caring about any of the characters going through it. Corporate Retreat introduces its cast of characters with an on screen prompt informing us of their position in the company. That’s roughly as deep as any of their characterizations become. At least on a personal level. We know one guy has a kid. It comes up once. You never think about it again. Another character has a background in chemistry for no other reason than for her to treat a round of poisoning in the most ridiculous way possible.
And then there’s our outsider. It didn’t occur to me until very late into Corporate Retreat that we are supposed to be rooting for her. Not because she wasn’t a part of the company’s upheaval. Not because she has some kind of hopes and dreams to get back to. And not even because she’s anchoring us as our avatar within the retreat. The movie does such a poor job with all of it that you couldn’t possibly identify with her character for any purposeful reason. She’s just…kind of there too. One of the executives decided to bring a date. That’s the character we’re meant to follow without prompts or care put into why.
In truth, the best characters in the movie are Ruck and his two assistants. They’re the closest that Corporate Retreat comes to having any comedy work. It’s listed as a horror comedy…but you’re unlikely to so much as smile at anything here. The dynamic between Ruck’s character and the two machinegun/sword wielding believers who follow him is about as good as you’re going to in Corporate Retreat. It isn’t funny…but they are, at least, watchable. Not much else is.
Scare Value
It would be an overstatement to say that Corporate Retreat will have you wanting to pluck your own eyes out before it finishes. It wouldn’t be too much to say that you might want to walk away before the halfway point, however. Not because the mutilation and gore are too much…and not because the scenario is too bleak. Because you just don’t care about any of it. Some fine gore is on display. Sequences drag out to what might pass for some as suspense. Alan Ruck looks like he’s having fun. At least someone is.
1.5/5
Corporate Retreat Link
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