The Belko Experiment– an honest review

Wowww…. That was not good. Wowww, that was good.

Watched ‘The Belko Experiment’ before reading this? No? Then brace yourself for the spoilers. Still here? Cool.

I’m not using any names, in case, you decide to watch the film. Gotta let some of the suspense breathe.

Okay… dumbstruck. Yup, that was what I was when the credits were rolling on my laptop screen. I actually can’t remember what provoked me to watch this film. I guess, it was coz’ it’d been like a hell lot since I watched my last horror or thriller genre or even a damn trailer. In case, you’re wondering which film I’m talking about, it’s The Belko Experiment. And the fact that it came from the mind of the person who devised the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise just knocked me out. Okay… so, a little info. The movie begins which a rather unusual day for 80 Americans in the Belko Industries situated basically in a nowhere in Columbia. As the employees enter the building they notice the heavy security and the Columbian local employees being sent back home. Do the men garbed in army apparel with weapons strapped to the soldiers checking their IDs seem odd? Does the voice on the intercom telling them to kill two people from amongst them seem offbeat? Does the sudden appearance of a heavy metal casing around the building seem threatening? Does the explosion of an employee’s head seem creepy? Is it a joke or a kill-or-be-killed game? Yeah, it’s the latter.

It actually seemed remarkable in the start when they all were trying to figure out what the fuck was happening and realize that the tracers the company had installed in their heads was the shit that was gonna blow their heads in a few minutes. And then, they understand that this is actually happening, and their dumb-ass phones ain’t working and that no one’s gonna save them in the middle of nowhere and there’s no way to escape this building.

The intercom crackles again and the mysterious voice tells them to kill 40 of them in the next two hours.

So, the climax begins. When the lineups are formed, one which thinks it better to work together and solve this problem, ‘the good guys’ and the second which thinks ‘rationally’ and considers it better to sacrifice a few lives to save theirs, the ‘bad guys’. Hmmph… good so far.

The ‘bad guys’ who’ve gained access to the weapons compound forcefully assemble the other employees and kill the old ones and those with kids over 18 and whatnot. Then they randomly pick. These all are those which the ‘bad guys’ personally know and are friends with, but to survive for ‘the survival of their family’ they do what they have to.

But when the kill game actually commences and you catch explicit scenes of the gashed or cut flesh and all the blood and gore, then you realize, boy, the director has nerve. And maybe that was one of the problems. It got too clear-cut and sick. But was I provoked to press the STOP button? Uhhh… no.

I just couldn’t. It was just too absorbing and gripping. Yeah, it’s true. All the following sequences were ones to glue you to the screen, regardless of the too many meaningless deaths. But, it wasn’t this carnage that seized you. It was the famous ‘what-would-happen-if’ scenario and I would’ve loved the film for it’s thriller had it not been for The Scenes. I mean, almost all deaths are shown and when during the middle, the background gets the familiar eerie red glow we’ve witnessed in countless horror flicks, that’s when my interest elevated.

That was too short-lived however. Two hours have gone by (in the film, I mean), and the intercom informs them that they have been one death short. Now, they were gonna blow more fricking heads. That’s when I stiffened. Simultaneously, countless heads explode and we watch the pitiful pleading faces of the wretched employees praying to be not among those, and all of them, whose miserable faces are shown on the screen, die.

That’s when the new ‘rule’ is dispatched. The one with the greatest number of kills will live in the end. Few people remain and among those are the ‘bad guys’. However, I do admit, that when the pervert from the ‘bad guys’ gets ripped and slashed by the ‘good guys’, I took extreme pleasure in it. I mean, don’t consider me a psychopath but seeing how he had literally butchered and stabbed and shot all the good guys, it was utmost joy to see his face all torn up. Same was my feeling when only two people remain, one good guy and the other bad one (not revealing the names or the gender! Sorry!) and when the good guy final survives after using that tape-whatsit-thingy to rupture the bad one’s face in front of a video clip about The Belko Industries over a tune too familiar and weird to complement the scene with. I’m not disclosing it so you can discover it for yourself.

Surprisingly, my heart was actually pounding like lightning by then. That’s when I heaved a sigh. I half-expected to see the winner’s head get blown to confirm the theory that this was a con prank by anti-social freaks. But thankfully, that doesn’t occur. The metal casings are detached and the winner walks out, dazed and horror-struck and tired and confused and enveloped in blood. Then the army personnel arrive and take the winner to the warehouse situated beside the building and there the winner discovers the huge screen showing live footages of all the rooms of the building and a board with switches on it beside the names of all eighty American employees. Okay, so here we find out that this was a fucking social experiment on human behavior. Yeah, that’s right. One which had been authorized and endorsed by the government. And also, such ‘experiments’ have been carried out numerous times across the world. I so much craved to strangle the men sitting in the chair telling the winner about a sanctioned kill-game which played on normal innocents to reveal the truths about humans and how they reacted in such a situation. You see that? The film did make me feel engulfed and consumed by various sensations, mostly hate and pity and thrill. So, we’ve got no complain there.

My mind began reeling with a sourness and pain. I was done. Sick, man. However, the next scene I thoroughly enjoyed. The winner had collected the tracers from the inside of the heads of those who had been killed by the ‘bad guys’. Well actually, he/she hadn’t but it was one of the good employees who was ripping open the heads to collect the tracers/bombs. The winner had put them in his/her pocket when the person gets killed. Anyway, when the supervisors of this experiment ask the winner questions about how he/she felt precisely now, and other queries regarding human behavior, the winner tells them that he/she stuck all those tracers on all of them. Even the army men. Yes! I fell in love with their aghast faces. So, the winner leaps for the switch board where he/she triggers all the remaining switches except his/hers. And boom! They all die, except for the man who perhaps headed the experiment. The winner him/herself shoots several times. Wow, I adored that scene. The winner staggers outside, where rays of sunshine bathe him and the camera zooms out to reveal the winner being watched through a small screen, surrounded by countless others, which show men or women, outside the same looking warehouse, cloaked in blood. These all are the winners or survivors of the same human behavior research experiments being held concurrently. Huhhh… this film made me feel so bad and despondent about the world’s progress in human science and behavior. I know I’m being silly and this was a trivial concept but I don’t really like films which emit an ominous aura in the end, leaving the viewer dazed and disturbed, no matter how much satisfied by the thrill of the film. I mean, I like films which have a meaning, even the horror and thriller ones like The Conjuring and its sequel (the power of family’s love), IT (the power of friendship and unity), the Girl on the Train (three women connected by murder and deceit). Then I thought, maybe this film does have a meaning; to put in the viewer’s picture how our influential figures can go too far for the sake of science and the sickness of their minds to destroy humanity like that. Then again, I thought, a human behavior specialist didn’t think of this concept. A person from the film-making industry did. So, is he sick? What I mean to say is that this signifies that such an idea, a concept, an experiment can be conceived. What if a human behavior scientist were to stumble across this film and say “Hmmm… interesting…”?

That’s when my mind went blank.

Okay so was this a good thriller? Yes, definitely. A good film. No, definitely.

I mean, that’s my opinion. If you think differently, then please let me know in the comments section.

Just to note, the actors were spot-on. Nothing to nag about. It wasn’t the cliched acting but the climax to object about.

Let me tell you something, watchin’ this film wasn’t a waste. It wasn’t one of those films which make you feel utterly spent in the end with no impact. Although it was disturbing, it was a new idea, aside from the possession or slasher films so much prevalent in the horror genre. But, often in horror films we see a resolution, a piece attained by the characters in the end that resonates through you and makes you think ‘Okay… now all’s good’. This wasn’t a such. Remember that last scene from The Hills Have Eyes? Yup, that’s the impact that the film’s gonna leave on you.