237 - The Belko Experiment

Slashin' cast.

Welcome back, fiends, to Handle Whiscare, presented by the Slash Incast Podcast Network. We're the show that dissects we're through the primal fears that fuel our nightmares explore and what terrifies us both on and off the screen. I'm your host, Millie Drunk, and throughout the month we're taking a closer look at clatherophobia and the fear of being trapped. As always, I'd like to extend an invitation to join our community of Gorehounds, the fiends.

Every Tuesday and Thursday night at seven thirty PM Pacific time, we host watch parties over on the Discord. Tuesdays focus on the movies we'll be talking about here on the show, while Thursdays focus on brand new releases, allowing us to digest the genre's latest offerings as the year unfolds. You can stay connected with us over on the Discord at bits dot ly forward slash handle with scare.

And with me here tonight, as always, is my co-host Garion Tao Zombie. Uh and zombie, uh, I am very intrigued by our picks for this month because uh we do have a couple of movies that I would consider it to be hidden shove. Uh but the movie we're talking about tonight had a very similar movie that came out a year later, which I'm sure uh as

It was even mentioned last night. Sometimes there's a little bit of confusion about which one is which because they do have basically the same story, um, albeit Uh, for different reasons in the grand scheme of things. Uh, but tonight is all about the Belco experiment. Yeah, a bunch of us, including myself, because you watch enough movies, things do run together, uh confuse this one with mayhem. Uh and mayhem is

Definitely in the corporate world and whatever else, but it's set around a virus and the virus that like gets people out of crimes because the virus fucks with their head and whatever else. I would argue Uh and I'm not even gonna argue, I'm just gonna say it. This movie's better.

Because this movie is not about a virus. It's not about tainting people's will or tainting people's mind. This is just a giant social experiment. And what people would do. Now the one thing I will say, and I know this is going to be the first thing that I'll say that's going to be wildly unpopular with people, is that at the end of this, Mike wouldn't have won.

Uh in a the true corporate world, it's the bloodthirsty people that win. There's There's fish and there's sharks and the sharks always win. Now, there's definitely some sharks. I've met some. I work with some right now who are so busy being sharks that they forget to swim and then that they eventually sink. But for the most part, sharks are pretty good at doing both. But in this movie the one problem I have with it, the one thing that sinks it for me, and it s sinks it actually pretty hard.

Is that our borderline pacifist violence isn't the answer, et cetera, et cetera, character, Mike. He probably wouldn't have been the first person killed, but he would have been in the first ten. Um Because when you have one of these environments, the last thing that you absolutely need is somebody who's a naysayer. And whether it be

You know, the mean streets of Chicago or whether it be in a boardroom, the naysayers are the ones that are axed pretty quickly. You you just need to get in line and go and do what you're doing. That said, the movie is still really fun. It's it's nice to see that The people that don't necessarily subscribe to that bloodthirsty uh aura of living sorta have a chance. Uh but in the end, uh you sorta have to accept that if you're not willing to go out in the world and kill, you're gonna be killed.

That's just how it is. And like I said, unpopular as hell, I get that. But it's life. Uh y you you either want the most you can possibly get for yourself or You're just some dirty goddamn hippie who's willing to sit and play the bongos and smoke weed and do whatever else and like, Oh, life is just cool, man. But then those those same people are surprised when their car's a piece of shit, their house is a piece of shit, and everything about them is a piece of shit.

So it don't to me the whole thing when I walk away from this is it's finding balance because I don't want to be a blood fucking thirsty shark, but I also don't want to be one of the little ants in the ant colony at the beginning either just walk around trapped. So the message in this movie I think is ultimately whatever you want it to be, but that's what it says to me.

Alright, so the synopsis for this one reads In a twisted social experiment, eighty Americans are locked in their high-rise corporate office in Bogoda, 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. Uh so this one has been kind of a fringe pick for uh any sort of like death game phobias that we've covered in the past. So I'm glad we're actually getting around to it because it has been kind of like on the back burner for quite some time at this point. Uh and really at the center of this is a pretty simple question of if you could kill your co-workers, would you?

That's the kind of question that lingers pretty uncomfortably in the back of the mind. Not because most people genuinely want to harm their colleagues, but because the honest answer requires confronting something unsettling about human nature. The Belco experiment makes that discomfort.

Basically the entire project. Here we have Greg McLean's psychological thriller that traps the employees on the mysterious Belco Industries inside their fortified office build-in and dares them to murder each other on a timer. With an unseen voice threatening to kill double whoever the workforce fails to sacrifice himself.

This is a savage premise executed with considerable craft, which is anchored by a cast that punches well above the film's modest budget, and is sustained by James Gunn's screenplay, which was written remarkably while it was simultaneously directed in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume two.

Yeah, I think he went into this and when it was first pitched to him, he was as I recall, he was in the middle of a divorce or something like that, and he was like, Nope, I just can't do it right now. And then they they came back to him and even though he didn't I don't think he I don't think he had a a a hardcore part in it, but I think he was a producer. I think that's what he ended up doing on this.

Um but I mean, yeah, talk about a hell of a dream. I mean, and it at the same time, anyone who works in an office has that dream probably way more frequently than they're willing to admit or is healthy to admit. Now, if you go back and you talk about I think the first movie for me that really sort of embodied what this movie Sort of is is is getting into, or at least is trying to get into the mythos of it. What it is, is the movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas.

And now while He at least you could say had a reason for what happened to him. I think the glorious part of this movie is that there really is no reason. It it's a social experiment. And even as you get to the end of the movie, it's flat out said, we're just collecting data.

And when you think about that, you think about all that's happened and and the the lengths that we're gone to to just quote unquote collect this data, it kinda tells you how important it is. And what it the movie never tells you is what it's important for.

So going getting beg getting basically back to the basics of of what life is and what going to work is and especially going to work in a corporate environment. I mean every every person in this movie I've worked with at one point or another. And there are so many little weird quirky things about the characters, about the setting, uh some details that you kind of scratch your head a little bit and go, hmm.

It's sort of the perfect corporate environment. And as I stated before, any good corporate environment really is a battlefield. And it's a battlefield all the time. And when you work in a place and you get to know people, I think what you soon figure out is that depending on what your job is, really depends on the ratio of time you spend doing your job.

to trying to outpace others. And I currently work with people who who you can tell spend ninety percent of their time trying to outpace other people. That's that's all they care about. And of those same people, a great number of them live in fear of the higher ups, right? And whether you have levels of management, whether you've got senior leadership, whether you've got C-suite, it somebody lives in fear of something. I'm either lucky or stupid.

Because I don't fear any of those people. Like even the place that I work, the guy that runs the place, he knows that I don't fear him. And he knows that I know that on any given day he could fire me. So I just say what I think. And it's not frequently, but every once in a while it's pretty unpopular and and like it it It's not met with a retribution so much as uh people scratching their heads looking around going, Huh, what should we do about this? and in the end nobody does anything.

With this movie and a and as it as it progresses and as things I don't want to say even start to get bad because You know, for the first four it's like the test, right? The first four is what are people gonna do? Are they going to you could phrase it as rise to the occasion or sink to the depths, depending on how you think.

But it sort of reeks of that social experiment. I mean y you never know. You could put eighty different people in a room and the complete opposite might happen in the first five minutes they might all be dead. You never know. The fun part of this I think is how they have the different levels of management. And I think one of the Fucking brilliant things about this movie and it makes me laugh every time I see it is it has John C. McGinley in it from Office Space.

And I think I said it last night and I was like, oh, it's one of the Bobs. And I don't know if it was intentional or it it just was happenstance and it was just brilliant casting. But having him in there and having him He's almost an extension of the same creepy Bob that he was in office space, where he's like, oh, and he just has that smile and that

But it's creepy, you know, and uh as the movie goes and as we start to see people and characters kind of come out of their cocoons and become who they're gonna become. Y you learn a lot about society really quick. And it's like I was saying last night, it's like while we were watching this, it's like, Yep, I've been in this meeting. I've seen this happen. And

The brutality is not the brutality. It isn't people dying or being murdered. The brutality is that it's actually real and it actually happens. Now Not necessarily people being murdered, but having their careers murdered or having their life murdered where their ability to do what they've been doing forever is taken away.

And that is the scariest thing to me from somebody who works in, you know, white collar America. It's scary as shit because people people will hurt each other. Not physically, but but they'll hurt each other to get what they want. Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned the office space because I'm ninety nine percent Sure, that the tagline for this movie on the poster was always uh Office Space Meets Battle Royale.

So like it's not a clue. Two brilliant movies, yeah. Um but the film does work hard to establish Belco Industries as something plausibly mundane before tearing that mundanity apart. So on the surface, this is a non profit uh facilitating the relocation of American workers to South American companies. Operating out of a remote compound staffed by a mixture of US expats and local Colombian employees.

Uh the hiring process is filtered through the perspective of one of the new arrivals, who in this case is Danny, and it hints early at something off, you know, contracts that surrender sweeping rights to the corporation. uh implanted tracking devices, frame the safety precautions for the employees working in a dangerous region. Of course we have the local staff, uh crucially, who carry no such devices.

By the end of this, uh really the clearest possible statement of uh who is considered expendable and who is not is at the core of the movie. Uh now what I will say in regards to the characters, I mean the build in in itself is probably the most honest character throughout all of this. You know, here this build-in is constructed with government grade metal plate in.

It's situated far from any population center. Uh it's really presented itself as this fortress against outside threat while functioning in practice as a cage. So when this lockdown begins, you know, communications are severed, Blast shields are dropped, and then we have this anonymous voice issuing kill quotas over the intercom system. And it's uh the the architecture of this doesn't change. Only its purpose becomes undeniable.

That is probably one of the few places where you know what I do for a living. Um every metal will melt. Every metal. Th there is no metal that you can take a blowtorch to and wipe off the soot marks and it's not even hot. That's just not a thing.

And yes, I understand that that's me and with what I my knowledge of the world and what I do for a living, it's kind of one of those things where I'm just like, oh come on, give me a fucking break. Still I sort of applaud the effort because it shows the people getting together, using their respective skills.

to make some sort of a dent in the situation. And if you're honest about the corporate environment, and it's from everybody from the CEO down to the janitor, everyone gets together, brings their respective skills, and tries to make a dent in their environment. That again is uh blueprint 101 Corporate America. So it it totally makes you get it. There's a few little Ah do I want to say flaw?

Yeah. Well okay. So cool things first of all. The Spanish version of I Will Survive playing during the opening credits. I love that. I just love that. Because everybody knows that they know that song, but if you don't let it settle into your mind and become an earworm, you're not going to pick up what it is. You're just going to kind of let it go by. So that was absolutely brilliant.

Somebody having an ant colony in the office? Nobody on the fucking earth would allow it. Not even a fucking a little bit. And then the one of the biggest things for me is they show this outside shot of the whole place and there's supposed to be eighty people on this place and there's like twenty five cars or something. And I'm like, So they're in Bogota, Columbia.

And like what, everybody carpooled or I mean like I like I just it would have been easier to believe if they would have had a row of ten vans because like my company has satellite facilities in countries that are not super safe. And generally speaking, everybody meets somewhere else and then comes in in a van. They don't take their own cars. So it was this weird mixture of like really colorful random cars, but there were not even remotely enough of them, and it was like

I didn't understand what they were trying to tell me with that visual. Like it I felt like you're trying to tell me something, but I don't quite get it. Beyond that, beyond the building and the fact that it can't melt, which is again, not a thing. The setting in this

In its own way, like you said, it's its own character. It's very beautiful. It becomes both everybody's heaven and hell, depending on on where you're sitting and what you can find in a desk drawer or what you can find in a kitchen or you know, what you can steal off of a security guard.

But it goes back to the whole, you know, sharks and fish and who's gonna be what. And In this movie we've got a lot of sharks that start out as sharks and become fish and a lot of fish that turn into sharks and I think that's definitely a thing but There are some people in this that are hardcore fish that would never become sharks and still somehow magically do. And that's the part where I'm just like Whoever wrote this

Really has not spent a lot of time in a white collar office because these are some of the things that just don't happen. But it does make good for storytelling.

Yeah, so what the Belco experiment understands and what really gives it uh whatever genuine bite it possesses beneath the bloodshed is that the horror didn't really begin when the voice came over the intercom. It began on day one when the employees signed their contract. accepted their trackers and chose not to ask too many questions about what they were actually agreeing to.

When it comes to modern employment, it's built on this kind of like unexamined trust. You know, before a first day of work, most employees have already surrendered their social security numbers, consented to background checks. uh, you know, agree to non-disclosure agreements and accepted monitoring of their movements, communications, productivity. And these concessions are made incrementally, each one individually reasonable, uh collectively amounting to this extraordinary transfer of autonomy.

So Belco literizes this uh arrangement, you know, the tracker is basically just a key fob badge taken to its logical extreme and then detonates it.

Okay, so that's perfect. That's absolutely perfect. That is the explosive key fob that shoved up your ass. Yeah, I love that. The one thing I wonder about is there's a perception, right, with like the the white collar employee. And I think um what is her name? Is it Danny? Yeah, Danny, when she shows up.

I wonder if this is what a lot of people that are not white collar think, that you show up and you get a company badge, a company credit card, a key to your company car, and the keys to your company apartment. And it's like Admittedly, that's definitely white collar. That happens to point zero zero zero one percent of white collar people. That's not everybody. Not even a little bit. And All things being equal for all the people in the world that hate white collared people.

Most of us our collars aren't that white by the end of the day. And so when I watch that, like I it there's this perception that it's like, I honestly like, do people really think this? And it's like, okay, sure, like I have a company credit card, but guess what? It's in my name. I have to pay the bill and then I get reimbursed by the company after I pay the bill. So it is is of almost no benefit to me whatsoever. Um I certainly don't have a car. I certainly don't have a company apartment.

And so it's like, I it this is one of the things that makes me honestly wonder, like, is this the world's perception of this? Because it's fucked. If it is, it's not even remotely accurate. But then a lot of the Especially like with the badge thing and then with the tracker thing. Like we're not quite to the tracker thing. But I don't think we're that far away. I honest I I five, maybe ten years away from

You walk in and it's like, here, sign this form, do this, and here's this thing into your arm and it's like, what was that? And it's like, don't worry about it. But it magically tracks how many times you go to the bathroom, you know, and then you get written up for pooping too much or something. And I mean, so it's I think we're close, but there's also a a a a perception of misperception that I think people need to get a little bit of a hold of.

But as everything starts, and it's not it is not uncommon, maybe not over the loudspeaker, but definitely like in an email or something like that, to get this huge announcement. But with this one, the huge announcement is just kind of like Uh like uh I did I hear that correctly? And once the whole thing kicks off, and once we start seeing people They're not panicking yet, but they're starting to sweat a little bit. And that's kind of when everyone's like true persona comes out.

And to be perfectly honest, that's when the movie starts getting really, really interesting. And once that happens, this is another one of those movies and I I I think it's in a lot of ways it's pretty similar to Feast in its energy level where you've really gotta hang on because

if you're not paying attention, the three people that you thought had the best chance in the time it took you to go take a piss and come back, those three people are dead. And Because there's a point where this movie and it almost makes like an opera out of killing people where it's like we've got this l this red light that kind of casts over everything and it's like bang and then there's a bang over here. And it starts happening so fast that it's just like, Holy shit and

This is one of those rare movies where and you said earlier that, you know, you didn't think there was a lot of rewatchability to it. And in a lot of sense I think you're right. But that lack of rewatchability also sort of makes it difficult to understand who's who. And This is probably gonna sound terrible, but there's a lot of women in this movie that look the fucking same.

So oftentimes when you think one of them died, they actually didn't. And then it kinda confuses you and you're like, Well, I thought she was well, didn't she take no. Oh fuck, okay. Maybe that's intentional, so it's it sorta kinda gives you that blending.

Because there are a few characters that stick out, like the two maintenance guys, definitely, you know, David Desmald Chain and Michael Rooker. They stick out like a sore goddamn thumb, but they're wearing fucking orange. So they look like prisoners like in a white collar boot camp. Um

But it's interesting how they do with the characters and how they try to screw with your head a little bit and just You n you're not even sure who to root for because it from this perspective that you have, you know, it's the upper echelon of the white collars that are the assholes, but Over time it proves to you that even some of the lower echelon are kinda assholes too.

Of course, there's also the class dimension, and it's really one of the film's sharpest observations, because even with the Colombian employees of Belco, they're turned away at the gates the morning that this experiment begins. No, it's an act that looks like exclusion but functions as protection. Uh we have the Americans who, you know, are the ones who offered their lives for financial incentives uh significant enough to override their misgivings.

You know, they're the ones who were locked inside. You know, that ambition and relative wealth didn't insulate them. You know, it made them more useful to the architects of this experiment. uh and therefore more thoroughly trapped. So the film suggests, quietly but pretty persistently, that the deeper that you invest in an institutional system, the more leverage that system acquires over you. You know, upward mobility and genuine freedom move in opposite directions.

And when it comes to the employees, like their own complicity in this situation is equally important. You know, we have Roberto's remark that like no normal people work at Belco is delivered not as a warning, but almost as a boat. You know it's the kind of thing that ambitious people say at these companies whose prestige or compensation requires them to overlook any red flags. The characters knew something was unusual.

And yet, despite that, they chose to paycheck anyway. You know, the film doesn't condemn them for this exactly, but it refuses to let them off the hook entirely either. That's an interesting point because I think about the corporate America that I work at and just about every person that I work with has a couple of screws loose.

You know, not to the point where the machine is falling apart, but to the point where this gear or this belt may wear out a little early because because things aren't quite as tight as they could be. And uh all too often the people that come in and that feel for lack of a better term, normal. They don't last all that long. They they tend to come in, try to do a job, and then move on because it's just too much something.

Now is is that ability to move on a strength or a weakness? Yeah, it's uh I don't know. It's hard to say. Um But you know, going back to my original point of if this movie highlights anything There's definitely a class aspect to it. You know, the people that are down the corporate ladder from you or the people that might be up the corporate ladder from you.

But there's also sort of a And maybe it factors into into both, but there's people that have uh I don't wanna call it a bloodthirstiness, but they have like a survival instinct and the people that were willing to do anything. And Like I know people that are willing to do anything at work that haven't climbed the ladder. They're just they're where they are and they're happy. And I know people that don't do fuck all and still somehow climb the ladder.

So there isn't just this one globed place where you can put everyone who, you know, ends up in the hierarchy of something like this. But I think in the end there's probably a f a few similar traits that they share. And this movie really tries to do a good job of separating those two. And the hard part is that it makes it the killed or the killer. And I don't think that's necessarily true. I think that we as people could be either one given the day. Um

And I was trying to think of a good metaphor for this. And the thing that I came up with is that I didn't want to say this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. I think about no, I think about my dog. Remember my dog? Technically I was my dog's killer. But it was the right thing. There are times in life where you see people that need a little help and I'm I'm a charitable person, but I'm charitable in my own way. Okay. I'm I'm not one who is going to give money to every person on the street that I see.

But there are times that I do it. My wife will be like, Well, why'd you do that? And I'm like, I don't know. I just had a feeling. So if you're honest, that makes me both the killed and the killer, right? And So much of that ends up being situational. And within this movie, what they're trying to do is bring you down to a very singular situation. But even within uh kind of the minutiae of this story. And all the little things that are happening. There are people

that react to the little things. And then there are people that react to the big thing. And all they can see is the big thing. And I think what that's what this movie is trying to tell you, that if you're only focusing on the big thing and you only have one singular goal That you might ultimately be wrong. Now I'm still gonna argue that our guy Mike probably wouldn't have won. Somebody would have killed his ass really early on.

But I think he was a very good compromise of what most of us would try to be. We would try to do the right thing. uh we would try to guide people. We would only do the horrible thing when it was absolutely necessary. Um but from what I know about the corporate world, those people

Don't survive, somebody else wins. And it's something that I can't get away from, no matter how hard I think about it, because it's just what I've seen. Um but I think he's the person we'd all like to be, if if we have the opportunity.

Except hopefully the uh not getting shot part by uh trying to hang a banner over the side of the building. You know, it if the snipers had a better shot, he definitely would have been dead, uh, given uh how how how crazy he got in regards to like trying to uh seek out help. Uh but what I will say is one of the experiments most revealing effects is just what it does to you know the office or the organizational structure.

You know, which basically collapses almost immediately and is replaced by something that is considerably more primitive. Uh, we have Barry, who is the C O O uh who is not depicted as a bad manager in normal circumstances. You know, this is someone who is experienced, composed, and accustomed to authority. Uh but that authority, like all

Managerial authority was never truly his. You know, it's just alone from the structures above him, independent on the consent of those below. You know, the moment that this experiment begins, both sources evaporate simultaneously. The organization above him has become the enemy. The employees below him have really no remaining rational basis for deference. You know, his entire professional toolkit, whether it's delegation, composure, strategic framing, uh becomes

Um, I I don't want to say completely useless, but at times it can be actively counterproductive. You know, the experiment requires capacities that his career weren't uh designed to develop at all.

I think from my perspective One of the things this movie highlights is understanding to stay in your lane. And With the exception of probably like the CEO of a company, right? Everybody below the CEO, whether they want to admit it or not, is a lackey of some sort. Every person below them is a lackey of some sort. The big difference is the number of people that can look up to you where in your place from uh among high.

And think, oh, well that's a person that if they walk by and say, do this, I have to do it. And the CEO, that's everybody. If th you know, you get down to the CFO level, well that's damn near everybody. You get down to the vice president level, where it's most people, get down to the director people, well it's still a lot of people. get down to the manager level, that's still a bunch of people. And then below that it's like then there's like the sheep, right? And

Not that I'm downplaying people that aren't you know what I mean. Anyway. I'm just trying to piss anybody off because I I I really have some thoughts on this and how. For me, what this says is that if you wake up every day and you want nothing, you get nothing. And we have a lot of people in our world right now that really want nothing, but are really, really eager to cry about having nothing. And they're surprised that their complete and utter lack of effort has not resulted in more.

With this, and I think the one character that really stands out to me when when we talk about the quote unquote lackey is Wendell. Wendell is a straight up fucking lackey. But he's also got ambition to not be a lackey. So that ambition I think is what pushes him to do more and more things, to go get the torch, to try to cut through into the weapons locker, because these are people that

Whether you like it or not, the the upper echelon a company are of a company are people that have to think ahead. They have to think two, three, ten, twelve, fifty steps ahead. What's gonna be the next thing? you know, as opposed to people who, you know, are in just kind of a worker position who are just thinking about the next task. What's the next thing I have to do? And People are also often surprised that, you know, one group does one thing and one group does another thing and it's like

Well you shouldn't be surprised'cause that's exactly how it's set up. You're you're set up, you're task oriented, you are you're driven by a machine, right? So you're just you're producing and doing whatever else and this other group is more produced by a future and whether the future is growth or whether it's money or whether it's a potential sale down the road, it's a different line of thinking and

because it isn't the same, there's often a lot of resentment that builds between the two groups. And this movie highlights that like a son of a bitch. And once it happens and once people are staring at each other and they start separating and that chasm grows between'em, that's when you start really having some problems.

What fills the vacuum is authority derived not from institutional sanction, but from just raw capability, psychological dominance, and the credible willingness to inflict harm. You know, Wendell, as you mentioned, really sees his leadership, not because anyone grants it to him, But because his particular temperament, uh one that's, you know, a normal corporate environment would uh pathologicize uh or carefully manage, turns out to be precisely adapted to this environment.

And I think really the film's most unsettling inversion is that the qualities that make someone dangerous in a functioning office make them powerful in a broken one. Uh Barry's arc also contains a pretty uh precise critique of how Hierarchical uh management enables moral disassociation. You know, here he is willing to make lethal decisions. You know, he selected employees to sacrifice and he frames this as difficult but rational leadership.

You know, it's a recognizable posture. You know, in ordinary corporate life, the people who decide which workers are laid off, which safety measures are too expensive, you know, which communities bear the cost of institutional decisions. rarely happen the same physical space as the people affected. No distance, organizational and geographic, uh permits a kind of clean hands relationship with consequence. So the experiment eliminates that distance and Barry cannot function without it.

Well, surviving in the corporate world is almost exclusively based on your ability to be able to hurt people. And so what does hurt mean? Hurt means offend. It means assault. I mean oftentimes verbally. Um knock people down a level. Now are there people that need that to grow? Uh yes, there are. I know people that have taken a punch to the gut and come out of the ashes stronger, harder, faster.

I know people that have taken a punch to the gut and just collapsed into a little ball and wept and not knowing what to do with it. For me, that's what this movie is trying to Kind of showcase is that who is gonna rise to the occasion and who's gonna go hide in the corner and suck their thumb. Right. And The truth of the matter is that for the world to run it takes all kinds. It really does. It it still goes back to that thing for me that

In the end, uh it it is survival of the fittest and and who are the fittest? Are they the best to necessarily lead, call it the future? I would argue often no, they're not. But in the moment the fittest are the people that are willing to do anything to survive. And so what does that take? And it it often takes putting the thoughts, the feelings and then oftentimes the lives of other people off to the side and just

making this one fine point decision. Now I mean for me, I've I've been in a place in my life where I had somebody who was above me slide a piece of paper across a table and say, cross off two names And that is If I'm gonna say it was hard, I'm lying. It was really easy. Um one of them was a person who was effectively worthless and the other person was me because I was ready for a change.

Now, if that had not been the case, would it have been difficult? Truth is, I don't know because I've never been put there. When you have something like this and it's The hardest part of the corporate hierarchy is that as it goes up, it gets to be a finer and a finer point. And with any one of these giant corporations

The funny part about how they find power and strength and prosperity is they think that it's chiseling away at the foundation makes a company stronger. The people that are down at the bottom. If we have less of them, we'll do better, right? And it's like, well, build yourself a pyramid and then start chillzing away at it and see what happens. Okay?

I mean it it may be a great thing to still have that point at the top and things are still great, but when the when the foundation's hanging on by a one foot by one foot pillar and the whole fucking thing falls over. You're just amazed that it happened. Oh my God. What I I I don't get what happened. How could that possibly have been the way? And so in the end there's there's room for both schools of thinking. But the foundation of anything is the foundation.

People have to respect it and they have to respect what it is. Now, can the foundation over time evolve? Can it become better? Can it become more efficient? Can it do whatever? Yeah, it absolutely can. But it's not something that happens overnight and it definitely doesn't happen at the stroke of a pen. And with our characters in this movie, they have such a black and at least the the upper echelon characters have such a black and white view of how things are gonna happen.

In one way, I sort of appreciate it. Like I I guess I get it. You just there's a number to meet, meet the number. I come at it from more of a perspective of there's a number to meet Who's the weakest among us? That that's just how I see it. And again, another wildly unpopular review. There are people in the world that don't contribute much. That's just how it is. Now, does that mean that they all need to be sacrificial lambs? Well, of course not. But situationally, with this.

Sometimes, yeah. And it's unpopular. It could be argued that it's unfair. Um But it's also just life and it it kind of goes back to my original sentiment. It's like if you if you get up every day not wanting anything and then you go to bed at night wondering why you have nothing, it's like Do you not see the problem? And I think this this movie tries to put that problem in a very specific light. It misses the mark a little bit because it just becomes corporate America black and white.

But still, it it it kinda makes you think. Like if you if you go to your job every day and you look at this these people, it does make you sit and think, which one of them am I?

Yeah, when it comes to emergency responses, it's pretty much long been established that the presence of other people tends to inhibit individual action rather than encourage. you know responsibility diffuses across the crowd. Everyone waits for someone else to move first. And really the Belco experiment builds the entirety of the middle section

around that phenomenon. You know, it watches this large group of people who individually possess the values and in many cases the physical capability to resist fail collectively to do so. The failure is not simple cowardice, which is what makes it interesting, no. It is the more like banal failure of collective action under uncertainty.

The difficulty of accepting that a situation is truly as extreme as it appears, you know, the tendency to defer decisions to emergent leaders, even when those leaders prove untrustful. You know the way that fragmenting into smaller groups feels psychologically safer while making each fragment weaker. You know, we have these employees who were arguing when they should act. You know, they d deliberate when they should commit and they splinter along pre existing fault wise.

Whether it's friendships, uh, temperaments, ideology, you know, precisely when unity would give them their own real advantage. It's funny that you put it like that. Because I uh I think I see the world maybe Maybe a little differently than you. Maybe maybe it's close, but maybe a little differently. When it comes to something like the office environment, I think it's oftentimes the assholes that act first. When it comes to the real world and whether it's

you know, a car accident and somebody needs help or i it it's a it's a simple thing where you can do a small thing for somebody and it makes their day. I think it's the the less decisive people that actually act first. Because I think they don't think about it. I think they just understand it's the right thing to do.

And when you have a corporate asshole, the right thing to do is often irrelevant. It it's it's it's based on some stat or some number um or some goal. Where The rest of us, I would hope, are Are are more kind of in tune with, you know, what is the right thing to do. And often the right thing to do doesn't have to be waited for and it doesn't have to be measured. It's just the right thing to do.

And that's why like as w uh you know, with with Mike, our character, it uh there's some spots where he he he stands up and he does some things that I think are the right thing to do, but are also clearly unpopular. And I think that's the rare moment that we're talking about. That's where I don't think either side frequently gets involved in that because it's just kind of a

It's a combination of paradise and a cesspool all at the same time. And what it looks like depends on the lens you're looking through, and almost nobody wants to be involved in that. At the same time, I'm still gonna argue at the end of this, Mike wouldn't have been our survivor. He just probably wouldn't have. All things being equal

It probably would not have been, um I don't think it was it Barry. I don't think it would have been Barry, but it probably would have been Wendell because Wendell would have killed his boss to get ahead. Still uh uh the overarching good guy, bad guy, do the right thing, do the wrong thing. It ends up being pretty subjective because the movie has so much going on and If your overarching theme for yourself is not your own personal survival.

I think it could be easily argued that In terms of life you've kind of already lost. To clarify what do I mean by that? It A six lane highway and there's a bunny rabbit in the middle, am I gonna run out in front of a semi to save it? Probably not, because it's probably not gonna be good for me. If it was a kid? Probably. Okay, so but you can't you can't completely spend your time coming from what ends up being a place of moral authority.

Because life life isn't that simple. There are times while you're where you're challenged by the morality of things, and there's times where you're challenged by the immorality of things. And you have to play it on a case by case basis. You don't just get to have uh a simple one size fits all solution to everything. And with our character of Mike, that's kind of his thing. Like everything is just good. I'm gonna be the good guy. Um

And even though the movie twists it in that direction, I like I said, I still don't think he would have won. I think it would have been Wendell. And Wendell would have been like And then I think part two would have been fun watching Wendell get dropped into like a helicopter blade or something like that. I was an asshole.

Yeah, so this movie observes the gap between people's self-conception and their actual behavior when they're under pressure. You know, here we have the Belco employees who were almost certainly believed, you know, before that morning that, you know, they would resist rather than complying in a situation like this.

I mean most people do. Uh the experiment's particular cruelty is that it doesn't test whether people have good values. Nearly everyone in the building does, but whether good values translate into effective action when the conditions are hostile enough.

The answer consistently is that they often don't. You know, this is uh uncomfortable not because it reveals something exceptional about these characters, but because it reveals something ordinary about every Really the deepest and uh I would say the most unresolvable theme in this is, you know, what it costs a survival system that is designed to implicate everyone who passes through Mike is as close to a moral protagonist as the film allows itself. He refuses voluntary participation.

He organizes resistance. He absorbs personal risk to protect others. He is also, by the end, a killer multiple times over. And the final shot reveals that his survival hasn't freed him from the experiments, but enrolled him in a much larger one. You know, he believed that he was escaping, uh, but really, he was actually being selected. The worst the single worst part about this movie is we didn't get a part two. It was honestly the single worst part.

That moment where and it's a it it's a little not believable. It's a little Uh call it John Wickian where he's like Because if it's if it's to be believed that this tracker that's put in your head has Location tracking, has sound tracking, um, has all these other abilities. The people in charge would have known that he had a pocket full of these fucking things when he walked into the room.

Taking that away. Um This very last moment where he's slipping all these things into people's pockets and then he kind of he sets he he basically r like flips a whole row of toggle switches except for the one that has his name. And it it has that little glowing red light by his name. And it's it's one of those things where in a lot of ways it's a little Machiavellian where it's just like whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh.

But even in the end of this, I mean for whatever happened in this whole thing and when they show all these screens going on and it it shows that it's definitely part of a bigger program and there's clearly a hell of a lot more going on.

Honestly I thought this was one of the places in the movies where they kinda fucking cheaped out'cause a lot of what you see on the screen is like repetitive of the other things. And it's like, are you telling me that you could not just or at least like desync them so they weren't in time with each other so it wouldn't have been quite so fucking obvious.

But for everything that we went through this movie, for all the human toll that we went through in this movie, for all these people rising to their highs or lows, we get to the end of it. And we really still don't know what's going on. We really still don't know who's running the whole thing. And we don't know what the next steps are.

For most movies I would call that insulting. I like I'd be like, fuck you. This is just for some reason in this movie it it kind of works. Where I mean it's it's almost like you went to a brothel in a foreign country, right? You had untold numbers of salacious things done to you. You woke up in the morning in the gutter, half naked, still half drunk, and then the only thing that you got to do was stumble back to your hotel room and go, I have no idea what just happened to me.

And in a lot of ways it's kind of satisfying because that is the human experience. Because it you go to work every day, you interact with people every day, you go out in the world, you interact with people. And no matter what you do and no matter if you have the best of intentions or the worst intentions, you honestly have no idea what tomorrow's gonna bring.

So I think it feels very apropos that we don't really have a solid ending to this. We don't have a part two. We don't have, you know, a stinger that's gonna tell us what the next thing is. It's just it's Going to bed every night. I don't know. I have no idea what tomorrow's gonna bring. You know, I can wake up tomorrow morning and for some reason you could be pissed as hell at me and say, you know what? Fuck you, I'm done with this bullshit. And you could just

Cancel out. I can't control that, right? And so that's just life. And I think in the end, that's what this movie tells you, is it it tries to give you a mirror to look at yourself. But then it takes that mirror and turning it left or turning it right gives you a little bit of a glimpse of what's either behind you or ahead of you and says, Okay, now react.

And you oftentimes don't have enough information or enough time to process things and and to s to decide how to act. So sometimes it's just like something happens and You don't know if it's good, bad, or otherwise, but it's still what happened. And you have to go on to the next thing. It's it's the just the next minute or the next hour or the next week of life. And your choices Yeah. You often don't have the time to sit back and and dwell on it and think about it. And

But then even if you do, you come to quickly realize that what is the point of dwelling? It already happened. There's nothing you could do to change it. And I think this movie ultimately has so many little hidden messages about both the human psyche, about where you wanna go, what you wanna do, what you're willing to put into it, what you get out of it.

And that ultimately you have a giant amount of influence in a lot of it and then in some of it you have no influence at all. And that's a hard thing for a lot of people to accept and it It it puts you in a place where you've got to go, well, what am I gonna do? And if you don't have a good answer, I I think you end up at a place where you're crossed up and you just don't know what to do next. Yeah, really the participation in monstrous systems typically doesn't require monstrous individuals.

Really only uh only ordinary people making decisions that are locally rational within a structure producing terrible aggregate outrage. Uh Mike, for example, you know, his choices are individually defensible, you know, in aggregate and from the perspective of the experiment's architects, you know, they are exactly what was once. The system was designed to be inexcapable in precisely that way. And it succeeds.

You know, the experiment mirrors the structure of competitive labor markets, uh with you know the euphemism stripped away. You know, workers competing against each other for survival under rules that were set by an ownership class with entirely different interests. uh in the conditions that were engineered to make collective solidarity uh individually rational even among people who generally want it.

So Mike's attempt to organize resistance uh is failing not because his colleagues were selfish, but because the material conditions, whether it's the trackers, the sealed build in, the information asymmetry make the fiction the rational individual choice, uh, even when cooperation would probably produce better outcomes forever. Now, this is not a pathology of this particular group of people. It's precise description of how competitive systems function in general.

Sometimes you say things that I'm just like, wow. And that that was one of those times. Uh using the term pathology there. That was oh, that was good. On any given day, if if you wake up and you don't have the future in your path ahead of you, you've already lost. Okay? That's just how it is. I think about the place that I work and the people that run it. And there's people who I respect. There's people who I don't give a rat's ass about.

And then there's people that have attained a certain position and because they have, they at least have earned a little deference. Maybe not respect, but a little deference. And there's one person in particular that I that I I'm I'm not I'm not gonna say who it is'cause I still like my job. But when this person first started, um, they said to me, Yeah, you're not really afraid of me, are you? And I'm like, Nope, not even a little bit.

And he's like he's like, you know most people are. And I'm like, Yeah, but I'm not most people. Um I know exactly what the stakes are and the stakes Don't make me afraid. And I was told, you know, that might be bad for your career. And I'm like, well then if it is, I'll find a new career. I think fear is a thing. that is used to control people. Okay. And it doesn't matter if you work at Goldman Sachs or you work at uh Subway. Fear is a thing that people use to control people.

To broaden that, I think fear is a thing that weak people use to try to control weaker people. The goal on any given day is to not be the weaker person. If you if you go to a job that makes ten dollars an hour and you hate it. But you also think that if you lost it it would be the worst thing in the world. Stop thinking it would be the worst thing in the world. It might end up being the best thing in the world.

In my career I've been laid off two times and I was like and in in one of those times I was About ten seconds out of a divorce and I had two kids to take care of. But it turned out okay. Was it hard for a while? Oh you bet your ass it was hard for a while, but it turned out okay. So when you get up every day and you think about who you are and what you want. Everyone's gonna tell you, oh, you know, hey, you gotta be realistic. You gotta do this and you gotta do that. And

I'm here to tell you that no you don't. All you have to do is want. And once you want, you have to be willing to work. And once you're willing to work, You have to be okay with the ups and downs that come with that. And within this movie. You can see that we have characters that are grinders, right? They just grind it. The maintenance guys, right? The security guy. They're they're grinders. It just is what it is.

You have the people that are kind of the floaters, right? They get to a certain level and they just kinda They stay there just because of their nature. They float. They don't ever go up or down. They're just right there. And some of them don't like it and some of them are perfectly happy with it. Then you have your people that are riding the rockets to the moon. You know, and for me, I I've never wanted to ride the rocket because I know at some point the fuel runs out. And then what do you do?

I think ultimately And you said it uh much earlier tonight, it th th the question of would you kill your coworkers? Uh now all things being equal, most of my coworkers are just like me. They're just doing their thing. They're they're plodding through their life and

And I use plotting like it's a negative thing. It's not. Plotting through your life is what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to plod through your life and and you're supposed to take the fun little moments and carve them out and make them just for you or make them for just you and your spouse or for you and your spouse and your kids or uh whoever it may be.

But we've come to a place and I think this movie is trying to highlight that where we've got people that are so separated by so many stupid little fucking things. And it's whether it's it it's a job thing where it's a little bit classist or whether it's race and it's racist or whether it's uh a a an economic position and it's uh you know a socioeconomic thing.

Life isn't this fucking complicated. It's just not. You know? Walk out your front door, walk across the street, talk to your neighbor, meet them, shake their fucking hand. Bring up ten fucking things and if you can find one in common, you know what? You've just made a new friend. Things like this where we have to ultimately pit each other against ourselves for the sake of pitting each other against ourselves.

is gotten a little bit too similar to what life is now. People people need to calm down, people need to be friendlier, people need to have a bit of sympathy, a bit of compassion. Small people. Need to have a spark plug stuck in their ass and have it fired up and get up and get going and do some shit. And once we do all that, you know what? People are not gonna people aren't gonna fare too badly, you know? And I think winning and losing is a perspective and

I know people that make a lot less money than I do. And don't work anywhere near as much as I do and are happy as shit. And I know people that make a lot more money and work a lot longer hours and are fucking miserable. So Be careful what you measure life by, um, because if you pick the wrong thing, you might have already lost. Yes, when it comes to the ending of this, uh we do kinda like have our eventual explanation from the voice.

Uh and that's that the experiment is the work of this international organization of elite social scientists who are operating beyond the reach of conventional moral and legal constraints. Uh and honestly the ending of this movie is the part that just feels incomplete. You know, it answers the question of who is responsible for this while leaving the untouched qua uh the question of why and what stage two is meant to accomplish.

Uh so what the final reveal makes clear is that you know the office build-in with its 80 participants and its 90 minutes of carnage, which Backtracking really quick when you're talking about Feast and this movie having similar pace in, one of the reasons for that is because on average, there's about a kill per minute. In this entire movie. It is Fucking ridiculous in that regard. Uh but anyways, getting back to this. Uh

This was one data point among dozens. You know, there were at least 30 similar experiments that were being run simultaneously, as you mentioned, at Belco locations around the world. And I I get your point that you were making, how that looks stupid. The I feel like the only workaround to that, which would have made a lot more sense, was if this turned into a survive the night. And then everyone just coming out

at the break of dawn type moment. But we didn't really do that, uh, in this case. But anyway. The voice himself appears to be a disposable component himself, you know, his death anticipated, perhaps it was even to engineered. You know, it was a final test of whether the survivor would keep playing even after believing that the game itself was over. You know, Mike kills him and the soldiers. Uh and yep, he advances. The experiment continues. Uh, but again

There's been no word of a sequel and obviously it didn't do too well. Uh so chances of that actually happening are probably slim to none at this point in time. Um

But all in all, like when it comes to Death Game movies, like I I still like this one. But the problem is if you are comparing yourself to another movie on your fucking poster and using that as your tagline. You need to bring it to the same regard of that movie. And for me, you know, we've we've talked about Battle Royale on the show in the past. Like that is still the creme de la creme. And I don't think that this touches that. And I don't think it ever will.

But I I understand the marketability aspect of why they decided to do that, given who they cast in the movie and just making a quick comparison so people can like latch onto it and just have an inclination of what to expect from the movie itself. So I don't fault him for it, but to me, you know, it's it's a serviceable addition to the subgenre, but it's not gonna be like a top five entry for me. So I think this one suffers from a timing problem, honestly.

In terms of office base meets battle royale, so Office space is kind of w it it was kind of people's first Comedic tilt into the corporate world, right? Battle Royale is something completely different. Inherently with this movie, they make a point of saying Even though they're in Bogota, Colombia, this is all American workers. So this was supposed to be an American centric film. So twenty sixteen, I mean, we're

seven to eight years past our big like economic collapse, i it their timing was and this one was just it was shit. If it would've come out in Two thousand nine, two thousand ten, this movie would have made fifty million dollars with the boxed office because everybody fucking hated corporate America because everybody was getting laid off. The bubble had burst, everything was just going in the toilet. That said, um re watching this again last night?

And I and again, because my collar leaned towards whitish, even though I don't dress the part most days, because I just honestly don't give a fuck anymore. Um It still hits really good for me because I can I can pinpoint every character in this movie. Like I know every single person. That said. Is your typical hardcore horror fan a white collar worker? I'll be honest, I don't know. Maybe. But from all the horror movies I go to in the theater, my guess is no. It's

Most of the theater showings that I go to now, there's an interesting young crowd that are all wearing sweatpants and bring blankets and have pillows and shit, which I really don't get. I don't know if you're Yeah, a sleepover? Like what the fuck? Um there's sort of the middle of the road guys that are a weird combination of like sort of hick farmers and uh

the like middle of the road sales guys. And then there's I think I think I told you a long time ago there was one guy that taught me the trick of properly buttering your popcorn. Well he was a he was a white collar guy like I was. But he was one out of the like thirty that were in the theater. So I think the reality is maybe the subject matter, you just don't have enough people that know this world enough to really have it hit.

But I think for me, this one, even all these years after watching it again, it actually hits even harder. Because I can put a face on each one of these people and in my head I can imagine pulling a forty five and shooting every one of the motherfuckers. Um is that good or bad? I don't know. What does that say about me? That's probably not good things. Uh This movie ultimately it it it kind of falls into the ashes because of its timing and because of the audience. If this were to happen

Uh I don't know, a similar movie, but like in a mall, for example. And you had all the workers of the mall, the people in the coffee shops, the people in the jewelry stores, whatever else. I think it maybe would sting a little differently because it would be a little bit more relatable. Um, you know, when it starts out in our very first character is like I said before, here's your company card and here's your company credit card and here's your company apartment.

I think a lot of people right there are lost. Like I don't understand that world. Um So I I'm hoping somewhere, someday somebody remakes this. But they give it a little bit of a Dawn of the Dead spin and have it be at a mall and all the people that work there. Um You know, it kind of uh office space meets mall rats sort of thing, but with a little bit of a horror aspect to it. I think it could be really cool. I think this one failed because it was

not super relatable to horror fans. And that's not really a surprise.

Yeah, at the end of the day though, like the Balco experiment was A well made but honestly fundamentally cynical exercise, you know, in watching people die bad. You know, the ideas that it raises, whether it's about trust, about hierarchy, complicity, about power, you know, all of those are real and worth taking seriously. You know, the film raises them and then repeatedly

chooses the sledgehammer over the scalpel. You know, you leave having uh thought about interesting themes and it it's gestured at them between all of that blood. Um, so all in all, I'm I'm still a fan of this movie, but it's not one that I'm constantly re-watching as as I've said,'cause that was only my second time I've seen this movie um since it came out. Uh but I do know

You know, uh the movie that I picked out for next week also came out at a pretty similar time frame of this one. Uh same with the other movie that is in similar vein to the Belco experiment, I think was also in two thousand and seventeen. Uh so on Tuesday night at seven thirty PM Pacific time, we'll be Hanging out in Discord with the fiends watching Green Room, uh, which is another one that

was a limited release. Not a ton of people got to see it. Um, so it's another one that's flown under the radar since it came out. Uh and you know. It's pretty similar in in that regard to the Belk Experiment because again, didn't really set the world on fire and uh more people just need to see it.

I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure, having gone through my memory banks and all my notes and like that, that I've ever actually seen that. So it actually might be a a first time watch for me. So that would be fucking something else. Yeah, you know at the same time it's like we uh it's funny when you pick It it and d this movie reminds me of how we do movies. Right? That you pick a thing But then in the end you've sorta got a window of what's acceptable. And

And if you if you feel like you're up against an edge, you're kind of like, hey, well what do you think of? And then there's a little bit of back and forth, and sometimes it's yes and sometimes there's a no. Um But in the end it keeps it interesting, it keeps it fun and it keeps bringing in new things. And like I know that One of the movies I picked, I think everybody and their goddamn brother has talked about. And I think one of the ones I picked.

is honestly a super fucking underrated movie. So and factor that in with one that I I'm still pretty convinced is a first time watch. I mean we got a we we got a great month ahead of us, you know? And Still lots of theater releases. Um we talked about we both saw we both saw Dolly and it's in a way it's kind of rare that we both see a limited release kind of low budgety thing. And then we both stop and we're both like, Hey. That was pretty fucking good.

I mean, if we both manage to see some one of those, one of us is usually like, that was shit. And the other one's like, I really liked it. You know, and so we have scores of like eight and two. I think we both landed on seven, dead on seven. And it's like so that's pretty rare. So

Uh everyone, if you have an opportunity, go out and see Dolly before it leaves the theaters because I don't think it's gonna be there very long. Um, and be completely okay with the absolutely no explanation whatsoever slasher movie because It's surprisingly fun. It's surprisingly disturbing. And uh I I will just say Sean Williams got tenacity or through the whole thing. Um, there's a moment in the movie

Where he finally gets to stand on his own two feet and then he promptly falls over. That actually made my asshole pucker in the theater. Like I was like, Oh d I mean i I don't remember the last time I was like, Oh this poor bastard. This poor bastard So I mean, you know, great movie. Tomorrow night. Undertone. So we'll see. Um and then getting into the weekend, hopefully if things are perfect, we'll see scared to death in the theater. If we don't, we're gonna see this is not a test on B O D.

And it's also my birthday, so I accept cash to Venmo for my birthday present. Glen. I'm not kidding. Um Um Jess and M, I also accept uh used underwear, so you can send that. And um everyone, I hope you have a a great rest of the week and uh we'll be back next Wednesday. Everyone. Stay scared, man. It's the only way to be.