Shared Darkness

In my latest Blu-ray/DVD column, over at ShockYa, I take a gander at How I Met Your Mother (the television show… zing!), The Mentalist, Ghost Hunters, Breaking the Press, the film with summer’s best, most hilariously engaging sound effect, and more. Again, it’s over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.

Director Creep Creepersin’s Corporate Cutthroat Massacre — which bills itself as The Office meets American Psycho — is a slapdash piece of genre entertainment which elicits absolutely no slapdash, whiz-bang, cathartic thrills, be they of the comedic, gore or genre-tweaking satiric variety.

It simply exists because presumably there are shlock-genre fans who so hate mainstream Hollywood tripe that they still make rental and purchase decisions purely on outrageousness of title. So… it’s a bouillabaisse of references (one could actually throw Glengarry Glen Ross into the mix as well, since there’s a competitive sales element to the proceedings), but none are particularly inspired or deftly interwoven, and the whole thing is variously over-acted and poorly shot, to the point that it makes you want to start flicking yourself in the eye, just to feel something real. Making matters worse is the fact that the camerawork shifts to lurking hand-held mode without ever clearly establishing an outside menace.

Expanded from a short film, Late Shift, from star-producer Elina Madison, Creepersin’s movie centers on Brandi Babcock (Madison), a shrill, high-strung manager at some anonymous white collar office environment. With an edict from above to fire folks by the end of the day, Babcock puts the screws to her minions, in a none-too-polite fashion. Bodies start turning up not long after a creepy janitor surfaces, so… you know, there’s that.

Corporate Cutthroat Massacre comes to DVD in a white plastic Amaray case with a nice, deep-set spindle — the type which helps avoid disc pop-out and damage (hey, I’m not above giving credit where credit is due). Presented on a region-free disc in 1.78:1 widescreen with a simple stereo audio track, the movie includes a few bonus featurettes, anchored by Creepersin’s audio commentary track. I scratched out a few notes on this movie while watching it, but they’ve since disappeared. I do remember, however, Creepersin rather freely admitting all sorts of screw-ups and technical faux pas over the course of the rushed two-day (!) shoot, which was sort of charming at first, and then less so by increasing degrees.

There’s also a 10-minute behind-the-scenes featurette with interview material, seven minutes in which the interview subjects discuss the worsts jobs they’ve ever had, and a copy of the original, 16-minute short that “inspired” this feature. The interesting thing there is how much better that short film looks. The material is still basically dreck, but it’s at least somewhat moody and evocative in bits and pieces; the feature version, on the other hand, actually evinces less production value (offices consist of almost entirely empty desks). Nevertheless, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. Or if Half is more your speed/budget, click here. F+ (Movie) C- (Disc)