"We Do Not Have The Right To Take Innocent Human Lives..!"
Written by Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn and directed by Greg McLean, the menacing mind behind the spine-tingling and wholly gruelling Wolf Creek, The Belko Experiment is the type of B-Movie which relies on an incredibly niche audience, one who doesn't entirely rely on the thrill of advertisement to venture out and see a movie and one which revels in the sight of movies which attempt to be slightly different from the inevitable and often mind-bending levels of high-profile generic garbage which are released simply with an economic opportunity at the forefront of its' mind and ironically, the same type of releases which more than often end up being a complete pile of crap. I'm looking at you Furious 8. With The Belko Experiment therefore, from the singular, quickfire trailer which I observed in the cinema a few weeks back, I knew from the outset that a cagey, ultra-violent affair was afoot, and with the successful duo of both Gunn and McLean at its' core, what could possibly go wrong?
Whilst the central narrative at the core of The Belko Experiment is one of which cinematic audiences are more than familiar with, with Gunn taking leads from a wide range of culty sci-fi classics such as Battle Royale and Cube, McLean's directorial lead results in a picture which although begins in a spine-tingling and intoxicating manner, one which revels in a winning mix of dark comic humour with Gunn's penchant for quick, snappy dialogue, ultimately does begin to completely lose steam come the hour mark due to the simply ultra-violent levels of bloodshed which instead of coming across as enjoyable B-Movie splatter, tarnishes the latter end of the movie with a sense of bad taste, a notion which is particularly hard to construct from a self-proclaimed lover of all things horror such as myself. Whilst endless shots of combustible heads and cold-blooded murder is of course something which is ripe in many gore-filled movies nowadays, the violence within The Belko Experiment seems so off-key with the middling tone of the movie that this particular element of the movie ended up seeming inherently rank and unnecessary. High-Rise meets The Hunger Games/Battle Royale, The Belko Experiment may be a mis-judged pile of tastelessness, but it too was a movie in which I was never bored and a film which effectively passed the time thanks primarily to the involvement of James Gunn.
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