Severance is a sci-fi/horror dystopia tv show on Apple TV+ starring Adam Scott, best known as everyone’s favourite nerd and Cones of Dunshire creator Ben Wyatt from Parks and Recreation. Created by Dan Erickson with Ben Stiller directing six of the nine episodes, Severance is about an office where the employees go through “severance” they are psychologically split into two people, one who exists solely in the office and one who exists everywhere else. Neither remembers or knows anything about their other self, apart from that they do exist. The office people have skills, personalities and desires but no memories, essentially all they do is work. The office is shaken up by the departure of one staff member, Petey, and the arrival of another, Helly. Mark, played by Scott, is promoted to office manager and deals with the orientation of the newcomer. Helly instantly hates what is happening, considering it akin to slavery and tries desperately to quit, even though quitting would lead to her “death”. The outside self of all these employees volunteered for this and want their office selves to carry on working.

The show is incredibly creepy. Not just the premise but the office itself, stark white walls, a maze of corridors, the on the surface nice Milchick but is simply part of management’s control over the employees and “the break room” where disruptive employees are sent and come back shaken.

Severance is not the only show to deal with the horror of life in an office. Movies like The Matrix and Fight Club have their protagonists stuck in boring cubicle-bound jobs which leads to one becoming a prophesied superpowered saviour and the other a dangerous gang leader with multiple personalities.

“Uh Oh, Sounds Like Somebody’s Got A Case Of The Mondays!”

Cult-classic Office Space has no actual horror or dystopia about it and is a comedy about a workplace but it may well bring on an existential crisis about the sheer pointlessness and frustration of working in a cubicle. It contains what might be the bleakest line ever uttered in cinema, “so, that means every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.” Peter (Ron Livingston) is hypnotised by a therapist into letting go of his worries for a few minutes but when the hypnotist has a heart attack mid-session the feeling sticks and Peter no longer has any worries and goes into his office job, which he hates, and does whatever he wants. He abandons the dress code, sleeps in and destroys a wall of his cubicle to give himself space and when efficiency experts are brought in to lay people off they are impressed by him simply telling it like it is – why should he work hard? Why shouldn’t he do the bare minimum? And they have no answer for him.

“Low Overhead, My Boy – We Pass The Savings On To You!”

Being John Malkovich paints a far weirder picture of the office. Out-of-work puppeteer Craig (John Cusack) takes a job as a filing clerk in a bizarre office located on the seventh and a half floor of a skyscraper with ceilings so low everyone is permanently in a crouch. The office is full of odd people – the secretary who claims everyone is unintelligible because of fictional speech impediments, the owner of the company Dr Lester who wants to have in-depth conversations about sex and relentlessly drinks carrot juice and the icily cool Maxine, who Craig immediately falls in love with. Things get odder as Craig literally finds a door that takes him inside the mind of actor John Malkovich, he can see through Malkovich’s eyes, hear what he hears, and after about 15 minutes is ejected into New Jersey. What follows is a surreal battle for control of the door and over Malkovich.

“Most Guys I Know Who Are In Mergers and Acquisitions Really Don’t Like It.”

American Psycho asks the viewer to decide what is scarier: a sociopathic serial killer coworker or the blandest of bland offices, where people confuse colleagues because they have a similar haircut and discuss business cards as if they’re going through the complicated feelings of hatred, jealousy, and awe felt by Salieri to Mozart in Amadeus. The workplace, Pierce & Pierce, does “Mergers & Acquisitions” and as nebulous as that description is even more nebulous is what anyone does there. The serial killer, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), is indeed the scarier option if only because the office doesn’t make you listen to Phil Collins while it destroys you.

It is safe to say most offices aren’t as dangerous, weird or sinister as some of the above-mentioned workplaces and the return to the office will be less dramatic.

Also Read: The Ingredients Of A Cult Classic

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Spoiler Warning for Choke, Four Lions, Being John Malkovich, The Blair Witch Project and Locke

Choke

A film based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel – is not as violent or immediately unsettling as Fight Club but certainly weirder. Victor is a sex addict who works at a colonial-era theme park and earns money for his con-artist mother by going to restaurants, pretending to choke and having a stranger save his life. Victor says that if you save someone’s life you feel responsible for them and so he milks them for as much money as he can. A weird start but it gets weirder, through an extremely convoluted turn of events it is revealed to Victor that he is a descendent of Jesus Christ (but he isn’t really). It’s very true that you can get away with stuff in books that you just couldn’t in films, it would seem ridiculous, or too dark and by the standards of literature Choke the book is weird, but in film, Choke is really out there.

Being John Malkovich

A film that is so weird that it sounds like a rejected idea from The Twilight Zone. Talented but unsuccessful puppeteer Craig takes a day job filing in an office where the height of the floor is literally half that of a normal floor, meaning staff are constantly crouching. On day one he becomes besotted with cool Maxine despite having a girlfriend already. Then Craig finds a hidden door that when he goes through it deposits him in the mind of the actor John Malkovich, seeing through his eyes, until being ejected into New Jersey. What follows is scheme after scheme to gain control of this door and then John Malkovich and the bizarre love triangles of relationships involving various people inhabiting Malkovich. It’s weird, funny and moving and even contains a peculiar cameo for Charlie Sheen and is the film that made the writer Charlie Kaufman synonymous with very odd films.

Locke

Tom Hardy gives a sensational performance as the title character in a film which is set entirely in a car, with Locke talking on the phone to various people about big events in his life. When I first heard about Locke I had assumed it was some sort of unusual thriller, was he talking to a hitman on the phone who had his family? But no, Locke is driving overnight to be at the side of the woman he had a one night stand with who is having his baby. This coincides with a genuinely monumental engineering project which Locke is managing but is missing to be at the birth of his child. Phone calls go back and forth between Locke, his colleagues, the local council, his wife and the woman he slept with. This should be perhaps the most boring film ever made, it even includes a discussion about filing paperwork with the local council, but it is engrossing. Locke is trying to do the right thing for everyone – he knows he made a mistake but he needs to support the woman he slept with, he needs to finish this job, he needs to be honest to his wife (obviously, he really needed to not have an affair but that has happened). Certainly, not a wild ride of thrills and scares but nonetheless a very interesting film.

Four Lions

I think Chris Morris is literally the only person in the world who could have successfully brought this film into being. Four Lions is the story of four British Muslims who are planning to commit a terrorist attack. And it’s a comedy. Chris Morris was already hailed as a comedy genius for The Day Today, Brasseye and more. For what would be a hugely controversial film he had a long record of staring down the assembled fury of the media and much of the British public and telling them to sod off. The film is exceptionally funny and poignant, we see the film through the eyes of the four terrorists and the relationship between best friends Omar and Waj is heartbreaking, especially when Waj is having doubts about their attack, Omar telling him to look into his heart, and Waj replying his heart says, “It’s wrong, Waj, don’t do it.” A truly great film that manages to have jokes about suicide bombing, drone strikes and religious extremism as well as jokes about the relative size of hands and Toploader.

Blair Witch Project

It seems conclusive that The Blair Witch Project is not the first found footage film but it very much has become the touchstone film of the genre. Nothing about The Blair Witch Project should work – it has no stars, made by unknown filmmakers, with an original budget IMDb lists as $60,000, the camera shakes like it’s on a rollercoaster and it’s too dark to see what is happening half of the time. Of course, many of these things were actually the secrets of its success. The fact that the actors were unknown allowed a marketing campaign that suggested it really was found footage, the shaking camera made it seem real, the darkness allowed you to imagine what was happening. Many people saw this film and hated it – it wasn’t scary and it was boring, but undeniably many people saw it and were terrified. To this day it is one of the most financially successful films ever when comparing the budget with the amount of money made.

Also Read: How The Blair Witch Project Changed Horror

More: The Best Performances of Tom Hardy

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