Severance Reviews

I had absolutely no desire at all to see this film because it looked a very cheap and rushed film. However, when I randomly watched it my college class, I sort of enjoyed it. It was hilarious to watch but it was also quite hard to watch as well due to the terrifying suspense. I would say Severance is mixed between Scream, Evil Dead, Shaun Of The Dead and Lesbian Vampire Killers. The suspense like Scream but the humour like the other two films I mentioned. There was a lot of gruesome violence within this film. There were some laughable violent moments like the bear trap scene. In 2009, the film was revived following the real-life murder of a UK teenager. This 17-year-old boy was killed in same way as one of the seven people in the film were killed. In fact, the killers of this boy were inspired by a death in Severance which lead to the so-called "copy-cat murder".


Severance tells the story of a group of seven people. Their names are Steve, Maggie, Richard, Harris, Gordon, Jill and Billy. When their bus driver leaves them outside a forest, the tables begin to turn. Danny Dyer isn't really an actor of serious characters or films. He is an actor of just entertainment. I didn't like him at all in this film. There were moments in the film where I seriously wanted to slap him across the face! It wasn't so much the character, it was him. Laura Harris' performance as Maggie reminded me a lot of Shelley Duvall's performance in The Shining apart from Laura was A LOT worse!


Christopher Smith directed this film absolutely brilliantly! In fact, he was a great director of choice if not the best. This would have been a good Wes Craven film. Every single shot when it is at night, it makes you sit on the edge of your seat like you are feeling what the characters are feeling. The script wasn't very good but could've been a lot worse.


Overall, Severance is a guilty pleasure of mine that in some ways was absolute crap but in others was absolute brilliance! It is a very underrated British film and I think it is fine as it is. See this if you like violent films and suspenseful thrillers.

The release that comes from a comedy moment can be made all the more potent by previously building up tension and suspense in a good horror movie. I like a good chuckle from a horror movie, so I had very high hopes for this movie, perhaps too high! Also watching it alone and on TV wasn’t the best way to enjoy this movie, but it wasn’t bad. Some lines are extremely funny, but the horror/comedy mix just didn’t work for me.

When it was all about tension, this film is very near to perfection. Camera angles change so you never know if someone is really approaching or not. Famous last words are banded about and you do expect each character to die at any moment.

The horror however isn’t horrific, there is implied cannibalism at one point, but this isn’t taken any further than finding a tooth in a pie . When limbs are lost, it is always followed with a comedy moment, which actually lessened the impact of each scene for me. What weakened this film further was the killers being too human, too visible, too numerous and far too easily despatched to be really scary.

The comedy comes almost entirely from the excellent characters lines and two visual gags. You won’t wet yourself laughing with this movie, but you will find yourself repeating some very funny lines with your mates, or even using phrases in future conversations, such as “you've got more chance of getting shit from a rocking horse”.

I’d really recommend this movie to any group of teenagers who want to rent a DVD and have a night in, get spooked and have a laugh at each other’s reactions. There is even the obligatory ‘women topless’ scene for teenage viewers to get all excited about and the classic last word of ‘Foursome?’