Written by James Gunn.
Directed by Greg McLean.
★★½
This lean, mean movie functions as corporate satire while engaging in Hunger Games shenanigans in a high-rise office building. It is kinda like Office Space meets Battle Royale.
Belko is a US corporation based in Colombia. The workers have tracker chips injected in them in case of kidnapping. The building they work in is a fortress. The movie all takes place over one day, where the 80 workers trapped inside are told by an intercom voice that there are three stages to their day. Stage 1: Kill two people in the next half-hour or four people will die. Spoiler: they don't comply and then four random people have their heads explode. Stage 2: Kill 30 people in the next two hours or 60 of them will die.
You have the normal guy Mike (John Gallagher Jr.) who seems to figure out quicker than everyone else what's going on; you have the business-friendly COO (Tony Goldwyn) who turns things into Lord of the Flies faster than what most of his co-workers prefer, while the movie has 80 people, the movie does a good job of making you feel like you can keep track of where most of them are throughout.
My problem is how predictable the final act was. I'm fine with the contrived setup and the journey, but it's too easy to figure out who the final handful of people are going to be.
