The Belko experiment

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Movie
German title The Belko experiment
Original title The Belko Experiment
Belko.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2016
length 88 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
JMK 16
Rod
Director Greg McLean
script James Gunn
production Peter Safran ,
James Gunn
music Tyler Bates
camera Luis David Sansas
cut Julia Wong
occupation
synchronization

The Belko Experiment (Original title: The Belko Experiment ) is an American horror - thriller with black humor from the year 2016. It was directed by Greg McLean on a screenplay by James Gunn , who also served as co-producer. It stars John Gallagher Jr. , Tony Goldwyn , Adria Arjona , John C. McGinley and Melonie Diaz . The film had its world premiere at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival , and it was released in German on June 15, 2017.

action

Belko Industries is a non-profit organization that supports US companies in South America . One day something is different at the branch in Bogotá , Colombia , already when driving to the company premises. The employees' cars are checked by unknown guards with detection dogs , and local colleagues are sent home. The employees come to their offices and begin to go about their work. After the 80th person has entered the building, an announcement is made by an unknown voice. All employees are instructed to kill three of their colleagues at a time. If this does not happen within a certain time, twice as many would be eliminated by remote control. The workforce soon realized that the chips that were supposedly implanted in the back of their heads to protect against kidnapping were equipped with small explosives. When the first try to leave the building, all the doors and windows are locked by automatic metal locking devices.

Phase one begins and the first four employees are killed by an explosive device in their heads by the unknown hostage takers who monitor the building with cameras and microphones. Two groups emerged among those who remained. Mike Milch, who tries in vain to cut the chip out of his head, pleads for a pacifist solution and refuses to kill anyone. The COO and family man Barry Norris, on the other hand, is anxious to save his own life and gains access to the gun safe with a group of employees. After an attempt to call for help on the roof fails, Norris rounds everyone up and begins to execute those he considers less worth living. Dany Wilkins, who was hiding in the basement the whole time, hears the gunshots and unceremoniously turns off the power to the building. Many of the survivors take advantage of the chaos and flee in the dark. At the end of the ultimatum, only 33 people are dead and the voice announces the execution of 31 more.

In phase two, the 16 remaining fight for their survival. Whoever has the highest body count should be spared from the hostage takers. Norris and his then ally Wendell Dukes continue their murders while Mike pockets some of the still functional explosives. The particularly unscrupulous Dukes is killed by Mike's friend Leandra with a fire ax , who in turn succumbs to a gunshot wound that Norris inflicted on her. In a rage, Mike attacks his supervisor after he and Dany shot the last woman in arms. In a scuffle, in which Norris, who has been tested by special forces, initially has the upper hand, Mike gets hold of a dispenser and hits his opponent's head with it.

As the only survivor, Mike is picked up by the guards and taken to a hangar on the company premises. There he recognizes a command center with numerous screens and a control panel on which the names of all employees are listed. He takes a seat opposite a man with a scarred face whom he recognizes as the voice. The man explains to him that he is part of an international organization that researches human behavior beyond social science conventions, and finally wants to ask Mike a few questions. He confesses that he has distributed the explosives he has collected to the guards and rushes to the desk, where he flips switches at random and detonates the remaining explosives. He grabs a rifle and shoots his tormentors before stepping outside. The last scene shows a zoom-out with images of many different surveillance cameras, which suggest that experiments of this kind are taking place in Belko branches around the world.

production

script

Screenwriter and producer James Gunn

James Gunn wrote the script for The Belko Experiment back in 2007 after the premise for the film came to him during a dream. The filmmaker was convinced of the concept because, according to his own statements, he was always afraid of social experiments that were not subject to morality . He also criticized competitive thinking and found that people often find themselves juxtaposed by forces beyond their control. The script plays with the fear of familiar people who turn against you in an obsessional situation. Every employee represents a different ethical position, from the immoral sadist to the utilitarian realist . The film project with the setting in São Paulo was financially approved relatively quickly, but Gunn postponed the implementation due to his divorce from actress Jenna Fischer : “I didn't feel in the mood to go abroad and make this dark film about people who are shoot and kill each other when I was in an emotionally and spiritually bad shape. "

Staff and cast

After Gunn had achieved considerable success as a director and screenwriter with Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 , MGM President Jonathan Glickman agreed to support the Belko Experiment . Gunn, who had almost forgotten the project, decided not to direct due to scheduling reasons, but as a producer was allowed to make decisions about the film staff himself . The director's choice fell on the Australian Greg McLean , who was best known for his horror film Wolf Creek from 2005. The cast, starring John Gallagher Jr. , Tony Goldwyn , Adria Arjona , John C. McGinley and Melonie Diaz , was announced in the spring of 2015. Gunn took on some of the cast from the Guardians films, including his brother Sean and Michael Rooker .

The shooting took place from June 15, 2015 in Bogotá , Siberia (municipality of Cota ) and Madrid in the Departamento de Cundinamarca and lasted 30 days. Co-producer Peter Safran, best known for his involvement in the horror films Conjuring and Annabelle , chose the location in Colombia on the recommendation of filmmakers friends. Director Greg McLean joked that his cast always came to the set tired. While he spent the evenings creating new storyboards , the rest of the cast devoted to nightlife in the capital, Bogotá.

synchronization

Tony Goldwyn plays the main antagonist ... John Gallagher Jr. the protagonist of the film.
Tony Goldwyn plays the main antagonist ...
John Gallagher Jr. the protagonist of the film.
actor Role name Voice actor
John Gallagher Jr. Mike Milk René Dawn-Claude
Tony Goldwyn Barry Norris Michael-Che cook
Adria Arjona Leandra Florez Milena Karas
John C. McGinley Wendell Dukes Bernd Vollbrecht
Brent Sexton Vince Agostino Gordon Piedesack
David Dastmalchian Alonso "Lonny" Crane Erik Borner
Gregg Henry The voice Gilles Karolyi
Michael Rooker Bud Melks Hans-Jürgen Wolf

Soundtrack

The film features a mix of classical music , including Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák and the 1st Piano Concerto by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , and Spanish-language versions of famous pop songs such as Yo Vivire (I Will Survive) by Gloria Gaynor and California Dreamin ' by The Mamas and the Papas , to listen.

A soundtrack album with compositions by Tyler Bates was released on March 17, 2017 on Lakeshore Records .

Track list

  1. Yo Vivire (I Will Survive) - 5:23 (Artist: José Prieto, Music / Text: Freddie Perren, Dino Fekaris)
  2. Security - 1:01
  3. The Building Is Sealed - 1:26
  4. Strange situation - 1:15
  5. These Walls - 1:09
  6. Head day - 3:30
  7. 30 Must Die - 1:47
  8. California Dreamin ' (Latin Version) - 3:34 (Artist: Gabriela Terán, Music / Text: John Phillips , Michelle Phillips )
  9. Panic! - 2:40
  10. Rooftop Anarchy - 1:34
  11. You Can't Save Everyone - 2:41
  12. Hearts of Darkness - 2:06
  13. Mass Murder in the Air - 2:16
  14. One Body Short - 2:23
  15. Aftermath - 1:27
  16. Molotov Cocktails - 2:43
  17. The Bigger Picture - 1:13
  18. California Dreamin ' (Rock Version) - 2:31

reception

publication

McLean and Gunn (second and third from left) at the film premiere

The film premiered on September 10, 2016 at the Toronto International Film Festival in the Midnight Madness category . In the United States , it was distributed by Orion Pictures and BH Tilt and was released in theaters on March 17, 2017. It was advertised with a series of bloody claymation short films by animator Lee Hardcastle and a computer game called Belko VR - The Escape Room Experience, offered via Steam . The goal of the Escape Game is to solve a series of puzzles from the first person perspective before - similar to the film - a microchip explodes in your own head.

The experiment Belko played at the US box office 10.2 million US dollars , of which a 4.1 million opening weekend. Internationally, however, the film didn't even gross a million US dollars. Regardless of the marketing budget on the one hand and income from the home entertainment licenses on the other hand, the budget of 5 million dollars could be reapplied roughly twice.

criticism

The professional reviews were mediocre. Glenn Kenny called the film in the New York Times a "gruesome, disease-inducing exercise in sadism " that tries to disguise its basic corruption with a thought experiment. He criticized director Greg McLean for "his obsession with pressing every head wound in the face" and found the man determined not to miss any cliché. He revels in the cheap and hackneyed irony of the choreographed carnage. Though the " Animal Farm Meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre " climax brought a few clever twists, the film made the critic less thought about the trolley problem than about the people who invented such puzzles.

Benjamin Lee from the British Guardian was much more positive and awarded three out of five stars. Comparing the premise of the film to that of Battle Royale and The Hunger Games , he found The Belko Experiment , while not a work of groundbreaking originality, to be much more fun than the majority of horror films currently in production. The expertly choreographed violence also means a return to form for McLean. Despite the low budget, there is an ambitious amount of framework action, which is rather unusual for the horror genre. Lee called the revealing finale "a bit disappointing" and wondered if there was more room for sharp satire between all the madness .

Veronika Hoch wrote for the FAZ that the audience can count on "moderate tension, straightforward action and solid acting performances" for the duration of 88 minutes. The music, which partially contradicts what is happening, gives the film a parodic approach as in The Cabin in the Woods , which is then not executed consistently. This “office battle with a difference”, as it is called on the film poster, has nothing new to offer purely inherent in the genre. Hoch drew a comparison with John Kramer alias " Jigsaw ", who gave the people in his torture chambers the choice of harming themselves or living with painful consequences. The mere change in setting - from vacant buildings to being trapped in the office - should therefore not be considered innovative.

Rotten Tomatoes has a 54% rating based on 95 reviews. The website's consensus is that the film offers a few moments of bloodthirsty fun for genre enthusiasts, but leaves enough subversive wit to be missed once the carnage sets in. In the IMDb , an average rating of 6.1 out of 10 points was given.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Belko Experiment . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 167992 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Age rating for Das Belko Experiment . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b c press release: The Belko Experiment. Cinema star , accessed March 9, 2019 .
  4. ^ A b Aaron Couch: 'Belko Experimen': Why Shooting in Colombia Was as Wild After Hours as on Set. The Hollywood Reporter , March 17, 2017, accessed March 9, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Don Kaye: James Gunn Talks The Belko Experiment, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Den of Geek, December 6, 2016, accessed March 9, 2019 .
  6. ^ B. Alan Orange: James Gunn Announces More Belko Experiment Cast Members. Movieweb, May 30, 2015, accessed March 9, 2019 .
  7. ^ The Belko Experiment. Proimágenes Colombia, January 5, 2016, accessed March 9, 2019 .
  8. ↑ The Belko Experiment. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on March 8, 2019 .
  9. ↑ These Belko Experiment Claymation Shorts Are Disgusting in the Best Possible Way. io9, March 15, 2017, accessed on March 12, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Brad Miska: They Made a 'Belko Experiment' Escape Room in VR, and it's Free! Bloody Disgusting, February 21, 2017, accessed March 12, 2019 .
  11. ^ The Belko Experiment. Box Office Mojo , accessed March 12, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Glenn Kenny: Review: 'The Belko Experiment': Kill or Be Killed. The New York Times , March 15, 2017, accessed March 12, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Benjamin Lee: The Belko Experiment review - gory workplace horror promotes nastiness. The Guardian , March 15, 2017, accessed March 12, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Blood and Office Flooring. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 16, 2017, accessed on March 12, 2019 .
  15. ^ The Belko Experiment. Rotten Tomatoes , accessed March 12, 2019 .
  16. ↑ The Belko Experiment (2016). IMDb , accessed March 12, 2019 .