Corporate team-building exercises always sound like a great idea in the conference room. “Let’s strengthen relationships, improve communication and build trust.”
After sitting through enough PowerPoint presentations filled with stock photos of people high-fiving, you start to believe it might actually work. Then someone announces the activity is laser tag, and suddenly everyone forgets about collaboration in favor of proving they’ve secretly been training for the special forces.
I learned that lesson firsthand many years ago during a company outing. The day started with plenty of laughs, good-natured trash talk and the promise that we’d all come together stronger as a team. Then the first laser tag match began.
Friendly fire became a regular occurrence; some people were accused of not pulling their own weight and others got blamed for dragging the team down. The trash talk that had been funny an hour earlier started getting a little too personal and more than one exchange became genuinely heated. By the time we packed up to leave, the team-building exercise that was supposed to bring everyone together had accomplished the exact opposite.
But at least we didn’t die.
The same cannot be said about the team members in the horror-dark comedy, Corporate Retreat, co-written and directed by Aaron Fisher. A group of corporate executives heads to a secluded retreat expecting a weekend of luxury, team-building exercises and a chance to strengthen workplace relationships. Ginger (Odeya Rush) joins the trip at the invitation of her boyfriend, Cliff (Elias Kacavas), only to discover that the getaway has been orchestrated by their recently fired boss, Arthur (Alan Ruck).
Instead of trust falls and motivational speeches, the employees are forced into a series of increasingly deadly challenges where trust quickly gives way to survival.
If that premise sounds familiar, it’s because Corporate Retreat proudly wears its influences on its sleeve. Imagine the twisted games of Saw blended with the corporate setting of The Belko Experiment, then sprinkle in just a touch of the class warfare and dark humor found in Ready or Not. The retreat quickly becomes a gauntlet of increasingly cruel challenges, each one more twisted than the last, forcing the group to decide just how far they’re willing to go to make it out alive.
It’s hardly the most original setup, but the film embraces the formula instead of trying to reinvent it.
One thing Corporate Retreat gets absolutely right is its use of practical effects. Rather than relying on digital blood and computer-generated carnage, Aaron Fisher lets makeup, prosthetics and inventive gore do the heavy lifting. The result is a series of brutal kills that feel appropriately shocking while occasionally flirting with gratuitousness. More importantly, Fisher understands that restraint can be just as effective as excess, allowing each challenge to build naturally toward one particularly gruesome sequence involving eyeballs.
As someone who can usually stomach just about anything horror throws at me, I found myself wincing and looking away from the screen more than once. It isn’t especially bloody, but the practical effects make it feel uncomfortably believable. Moments like that are balanced by the film’s dark sense of humor, creating an odd rhythm where you’ll cringe one minute and chuckle at the absurdity of the situation the next. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but Corporate Retreat pulls it off better than I expected.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the characters.
Outside of Arthur, who Alan Ruck clearly has a blast portraying, the employees are surprisingly forgettable. Most are defined by a single personality trait or office stereotype before being shuffled into the next deadly challenge. That becomes more noticeable as the body count rises. Rather than worrying about who might survive, I found myself more interested in seeing what the next challenge would be.
Even the film’s eventual “final person” is given only the faintest hint of a personality, making it difficult to become emotionally invested. When the traps are more memorable than the people caught in them, something has gone missing from the equation.
The screenplay doesn’t help matters. The dialogue rarely sounds like conversations real coworkers would have, often feeling clunky and overly scripted as characters move from one set piece to the next. The dark humor still lands often enough to earn a few chuckles, but the awkward dialogue leaves much of the cast delivering their lines stiffly.
Whether that’s the result of the writing, the direction or a combination of both is hard to say, but outside of Alan Ruck, few performances ever feel completely natural. That emotional distance keeps the film from reaching its full potential.
My biggest disappointment, however, was the ending. After steadily escalating the brutality throughout the middle of the film, Corporate Retreat loses some of its momentum during the final act. The blood and painful moments are still there, but the climax never delivers the payoff the movie spends so much time building toward. Without venturing into spoiler territory, I’ll simply say the finale lacks the same creativity and tension that made the earlier challenges entertaining. It doesn’t ruin the movie, but it does leave it limping across the finish line.
I give Corporate Retreat two out of five stars.
Beneath the blood-soaked team-building exercises is the outline of a fun horror satire about the absurdity of corporate culture. The practical effects are impressive, the gore is used effectively, and the dark humor offers enough laughs to make the experience worthwhile. Unfortunately, forgettable characters, clunky dialogue and an underwhelming finale keep it from living up to the films that inspired it.
I’ve survived enough corporate meetings, mandatory training sessions and team-building exercises to know they can be painful. Thankfully, none of them involved a murderous former boss, knives, guns, poison or spoons. Yes, spoons. Looking back, getting accused of friendly fire and not pulling my own weight during laser tag wasn’t so bad after all.