THE BELKO EXPERIMENT Review

The Belko Experiment (2017) 

A Review By Ben Hunter

4.5/5 Stars 

GET TO THE POINT BEN!

Tasteful carnage that logically satisfies your intellectual cravings!

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The crispness in the air we reinvigorate our bodies with. The briny nature of the texture of our cuisine. The embrace of a lover. What do we feel when we carry on routine? Why do some enjoy the rush of liberating exercise while others the intensity of vigorous, intellectual debate? What makes us feel the bitter remorse of tragedy within the soul?

Life, valuable and sacred, its sanctity preserved. But when forced to test this cherished vow of preservation, what is one truly capable of? 

This is what drives Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr., Short Term 12, 10 Cloverfield Lane). To never cease to stray from his morals. To know there is right and wrong and safeguard such morality. When girlfriend Leandra (Adria Arjona) informs him that people become the barbaric mammals we’re innately sourced from, Mike is challenged to compromise the conservation of his spirit. 

Now why would that be? Oh, because people start dying all around Mike, that’s why. 

Mike & Leandra fight for survival at Belko. 

It was just a normal day at Belko Industries. Mike & Adria were foolishly fooling around in the office. Dany (Melonie Diaz, Fruitvale Station) was just trying not to get fired on her first day on the job. Barry (Tony Goldwyn) was chugging away keeping the company afloat as the head honcho. And right on cue, there’s a gay guy and even a black chick thrown in the mix to complete the cast, when a voice takes over the intercom. 

There needs to be two people dead in half an hour is instructed. Naturally, our beloved, barely developed Belko employees shrug it off as a prank. And then the walls submerge to the impenetrable steel coverings. Company mechanics can’t even blow torch through it. Mike & Co. can’t bear that this is dire … until two people at random are killed. The voice reminds everyone “they” mean business. 

Dany learned while parking that morning that the chip implanted in her head was for tracking purposes and mandatory for all employees in the case of a kidnapping. Apparently this is necessary with Belko being a well off company south of the U.S./Mexican border and a ways away from the nearest metropolitan. Well, those chips have explosives implanted in them. And everyone is now in fear as they witness co-worker friends’ heads explode right in front of their eyes. Control is now prevalent.  

The voice continues that if anyone makes any attempt to escape, more heads will explode. That is unless you do what it says. That being none other than reducing the employee roster, segment by segment of time. 

Trapped in a steel building, panic ensues as argument commences over the sanctity of human life being put to the test of innately sourced human origin. Survival of the fit, only the strong survive. That’s the name of the game. Mike struggles to enforce morality in the minds of everyone, a likable quality in our lead that drives his every action. But others just want to live, and morality goes out the window when it’s either you or I. 

The savageness in behavior seep out ever so delicately in the first decimals of the villainess voice. Then raw, human emotion begin to sink its grip as life becomes the sole focus of Belko. Anger, competition, sex and seduction, fear, pure. organic. despair. And it couldn’t be more beautiful as writer James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) smoothly takes us from genuine lust for another’s body as Mike and his young, naive, new girlfriend can’t keep apart; to Barry the boss remaining the master of his fate as an attractive female he employs disingenuously lusts for her manager’s body utilizing hers as leverage to keep such body preserving her life.  It’s the little aspects like this that tag along the journey to make up for quite a complete story leaving one salivating for another bite of the Belko cuisine. Just a tad more character development seasoning wouldn’t have hurt, and maybe another serving of explanation of the implanted chips. Nevertheless, the story flew fluidly as the plot points logically progressed. I couldn’t help but nod my head in approval. The upright position of most of the attendees of my screening confirms such fluidity in my book as well.

Definitely for the intellectually hungry who don’t mind the consumption of cleverly thought out carnage. 

The Belko Experiment

Horror, 88 Minutes, R

Written By: James Gunn

Directed By: Greg McLean

Cast: John Gallagher Jr., Tony Goldwyn, Adria Arjona, John C. McGinley, Melonie Diaz