The The Belko Experiment

The The Belko Experiment

In a twisted social experiment, eighty Americans are locked in their high-rise corporate office in Bogotá, Colombia, and ordered by an unknown voice coming from the company's intercom system to participate in a deadly game of kill or be killed.
The Belko Experiment is decent entertainment until the final ten minutes or so, with a too-soon ending that (oddly) could have used some more exposition. But overall, it&#39;s vicious in its profile of the human spirit and the evil that men do when confronted with a moral quandary that has no positive outcome.<br/><br/>The Belko Corporation is headquartered in a high rise outside of Bogota, Colombia. It&#39;s not clear what they do, but everyone dresses in business attire, so it must be something important. On this particular day, security seems to be even tighter than usual, with local soldiers asking employees for ID and with temporary workers being unexpectedly turned away.<br/><br/>We meet some of the staff. Mike (John Gallagher, Jr.), an exec; his love interest Leandra (Adria Arjona), the creepy Wendell (John C. McGinley), and the big boss, Barry (Tony Goldwyn), plus many others. Looks like a humdrum day for office drones. That is, until all of the windows - and door - are suddenly covered by thick metallic barriers, and a voice comes over the PA system. The voice tells staff that in thirty minutes, they - the staff - must kill two people, or else more will be killed. Some believe the incident to be one big joke, but about 30 minutes in, the backs of some people&#39;s heads explode. No, not snipers. You see, every employee at Belko has a chip in the back of their head. Because it&#39;s Colombia, you see, and there are always kidnappings (particularly of foreign nationals). Just a way for the fine folks at Belko to keep track of you, should you go missing. But, as you&#39;ve probably guessed, those chips are actually explosives, and that&#39;s how we know the baddies are serious.<br/><br/>Chaos reigns for much of the rest of the film, as people realize there&#39;s no way out of their predicament. A couple of camps emerge, one that wants to kill fellow staff so that they themselves can live, and another that wants no part of the killing. Man versus fellow man. Who will prevail? Probably not man.<br/><br/>For the most part, this is a fine movie. Maybe not one you want to think about too much, but then again there&#39;s not much to think about. We know only enough about the characters to kind of care about their fates. And, for the most part, we don&#39;t know anything about the forces outside the building. True, the internal conflict is what drives the movie, but perhaps a little more about why this is the case would have been helpful. The performances are good, but not exceptional.
I&#39;ve been looking forward to this movie, I wasn&#39;t so disappointed by the overall concept, but the execution left a lot to be desired. This movie aims to tackle morality, what is good and what is bad and whose life is worth more. It reminds me of the Stanford Prison Experiment which we briefly covered in psychology - what do people do and how do they change if they&#39;re put in a position of power. Unpacking that psychology was interesting in the movie but I feel like we never get close enough to any of the characters to really care &amp; there is a lot of &#39;convenient&#39; killing for the sake of not having to do that deep dive that the topic asks for. It&#39;s a pretty gorey and blunt film that begs the question but fails to answer. Acting was decent enough, would I recommend it? Probably not, it shows us things we already know and expect but fails to provide any logic or reasoning, or offer any alternative perspective.
The Belko Experiment is a grisly, sick-making exercise in sadism that tries to camouflage its base venality in a thought-experiment plot.
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