Tony Goldwyn, John C. McGinley and Owain Yeoman in The Belko Experiment.Supplied
A lean, mean, bloody comedy of the darkest order, Greg McLean's The Belko Experiment is pure genre fun. With a canny script from James Gunn (yes, the man behind the blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy and its recent sequel, but before that, the truly weird cult hits Super and Slither) and tight direction from Wolf Creek's McLean, the film looks at one especially brutal day in the life of the Belko Corporation, a vaguely defined outfit in Colombia rife with bored expat workers (including Gunn regulars Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry and brother Sean Gunn). But then, as tends to happen in Gunn scripts, all hell breaks loose and suddenly, the Belko employees are trapped in the worst kind of office politics (you know, the type in which you might end up dead). You'll laugh, you'll cry and you'll probably gag – and you'll likely be all the better for it. At the very least, it's certainly the bolder and more uncompromised of the two Gunn projects currently in theatres.
Barry Hertz