The Belko Experiment – 2016 – Would you survive?
The Belko Experiment begins pretty awkwardly. The employees are all searched when going into the office building. We as the audience know that something violent is going to happen so for us it might not be strange. But if you look at it from the eyes of the personnel you might see it in a different light. Wouldn’t you be surprised if you suddenly were frisked before entering your office building, after being employed a year? I would! I guess they get away with it by claiming some terrorist threat though.
The day starts off pretty normal after that. People behave like they used to. Some work hard, some are way behind and some are just plain assholes. Every office has them, nothing unusual there. What happens next defines the movie though, it brings out the core of what the movie is about – human nature. Suddenly a voice is heard all over the building. A voice tells them that there are 80 people in the building and that in two hours’ time two must be dead.
You can imagine the confusion. Is this a joke? Who’s staging it? It can’t be true, can it? We know it to be true of course, but ever I was led to doubt it for a while. Could anyone really be that vicious? To make a long story short. Everything is true. Two people really must die and that’s just the beginning. Soon they’re faced with additional challenges. More people must die.
There are some really bloody and extreme scenes but overall The Belko Experiment isn’t a violent film in that perspective. I mean, of course, it’s violent when people are forced to kill others in order to stay alive themselves. But the main thing here is not the killing. The main thing is really the drama, the human characters that choose to go berserk and those who choose to do not.
On the cover of the film, they compare this to Battle Royale. Well in some sense that is true of course. In both movies, people are forced to kill their friends to survive. But on the other hand, that’s true for Saw as well. The Belko Experiment sure is macabre though. The whole idea of the plot is quite inhumane.
I was a bit disappointed by the ending though. First of all, I saw it coming early on. I was hoping that I was wrong because I’ve seen the exact same end solution before. If you haven’t this might rock your boat a bit more than mine did. I won’t tell you anything about it or even give examples of it here. I’ve seen it before since you might not be aware of it, And I think that it will spoil the experience for you if you know it beforehand.
