At times, “Corporate Retreat,” released May 22, felt more like a superhero movie than a horror film — the good guys won, the bad guys lost, and there wasn’t much complexity in characterizing either camp. The main difference? A lot more gore.
The 89-minute horror-comedy written and directed by Aaron Fisher follows a group of colleagues at a thriving tech company as they spend the weekend at a luxury corporate retreat in the remote desert. From the beginning, the movie is trying to signal that something is off, albeit a little heavy-handedly.
Within the first several minutes of the film, Deborah (Rosanna Arquette), one of the employees of the illustrious Immaculate Pond Technologies, walks into a room where several dead bodies are hanging. Almost immediately, she is strangled by an unseen third party.
This scene spells out the presence of a prevalent danger to the viewer — namely a rampant murderer in the house. Still, it falls flat because of just how much it distrusts the viewer’s intelligence to pick up on the more subtle cues, such as the two house leads’ firm insistence on taking away all cellphones.
The randomness of the scene is hard to buy into and ultimately interrupts the plot, making the film seemingly want to capitalize on the Hollywood allure of the Arquette name without actually involving her character for more than a couple minutes. Soon after Deborah’s death, we learn that the ex-CEO of IPT, Arthur Scott (Alan Ruck), orchestrated the employees’ arrival at the retreat. Scott is sadistic and vengeful after being pushed out of the company. He says he desires to help the employees find enlightenment by forcing them to perform rituals for each of the “seven gateways,” which are akin to chakras. Each gateway, we quickly learn, corresponds to some sort of bodily mutilation or murder — such as an overly lengthy scene where each remaining character scoops out their left eyeball with a spoon.
In a conversation that only exists to share this detail, it’s revealed that one of the characters, Aubrey (Ellen Toland), has three degrees, most importantly in biology and chemistry. This detail works out way too perfectly a few minutes later when the team has been poisoned with Clostridium botulinum, the bacteria causing botulism, and she must work out a chemical reaction using babchi and household items to treat them before they perish. Naturally, she does, and they continue on.
The most redeeming part of the film was Ruck’s character, who was the main source of comic relief throughout the story. Many may recognize him from his role as Connor Roy in HBO’s four-season breakout hit “Succession,” and he brings the same fragile manhood and susceptibility to this role. Despite his character’s truly impressive cognitive dissonance to deem torture to be the path to enlightenment, he has some moments of self-awareness, admitting he may be a “psychopath, maybe; freak, perhaps.”
The other actors could have had little moments like this that earned some laughs, but it seems the best writing was saved for Ruck’s character, limiting the talented cast’s ability to showcase the extent of their acting.
In the end, none of the characters reached true enlightenment, and it seems likely that none of the viewers did either.
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