Mayhem

Joe Lynch’s fantastically creative, subversive and Tarantino-esque Mayhem stands alone as an entertainingly bloody and dark and twisted social satire — but it’s even more satisfying for those of us who loved Steven Yeun’s Glenn on The Walking Dead.

A smartly constructed and sardonically funny indie with attitude that somehow manages the tricky feat of being exuberantly over the top even as it remains consistently on target.

Everyone involved grabs his/her role by the horns and rides the adrenaline rush to victory or death.

It’s a funny, bloody mess, but a polished C-movie that aspires to B-movie status.

Mayhem is an energetic genre flick that looks stunning and moves at a ferocious pace...But contrived dialogue and a bewildering narrative tarnish this otherwise enjoyable pulp effort.

While Lynch has experience delivering breezy action, “breezy” can shade into “frivolous” — or even “forgettable.” As good as Yeun and Weaving are, there’s not a lot here that hasn’t been done

Like so many shoot-‘em-up video games that repeatedly break for cutscenes, the film too often diffuses its tense energy by whipping up context.

I’m shocked that this movie came out in 2017 and not post pandemic considering such a big part of its plot involved a virus and a quarantine. That said, do you like violence? This movie has SO much violence and it’s perspective is mostly pretty positive towards all that violence and displays it as fun and adrenaline inducing, empowering, even. It fits in really nicely with the concept of the virus, that it takes away your ability to moralize and that everything just becomes emotion, I think this movie could easily be read with a subtext of class warfare- there is definitely something there about the grunt white collar worker and the lady whose house is about to be foreclosed teaming up using the tools of a construction worker to tear apart a big wig corporate law firm. But that aside, this movie is just fun and snappy- it’s all the violence and abandonment of morality that you might see in the purge fused with the direct to audience narration and schemes that are in your typical heist movie, with an added bonus of inner office work drama taken to 11. None of the characters are good people, but they don’t need to be. Steven Yeun does a fantastic job in the lead role being believablely unhinged in just the right way that his rage is very focused and you can get behind his characters rampage. This movie might be too bloody for some, especially the first sequence which is as soon as it begins, but it’s mostly just bloody brutal fights with not a lot of other kinds of gore. One tongue is removed but it doesn’t happen on screen. The comedy does veer towards dark. it’s a relatively quick watch and it’s a ride the whole way, and it definitely appeals to the id.
Side note: what is it about two attractive people covered in blood, smoking, and laughing? There is just something about it, isn’t there…something unnamable…something really rather hot….thank you Steven yeun and samara weaving for your service

It’s Ridiculously strange. But even so, it’s all for the better. Rating - 82%

The was the second attempt at trying to watch this film as in all honesty I'd forgotten why I switched it off originally... And it was mainly down to one word, contrived. This sort of movie is usually up my street, but the try hard nature just put me off, over acting, implausibility, just everything screams 'me too'. It just amounts to flashy muddled direction, lazy script and tons of fake blood. A very Poor four.

Un virus rend tout un immeuble de gratte-papiers particulièrement vénères... et très susceptibles... S'ensuit alors une crise généralisée d'ultra-violence avec tout ce qui peut leur tomber sous la main ! c'est un petit nanar assez bien fichu qui utilise les moyens limités dont il dispose à bon escient : les employés et les cadres s'insultent copieusement, se menacent et se mettent sur la gueule dans la haine et la mauvaise humeur... La mise en scène est proprette (mais attention, ça tache pas mal la moquette) et la gentille satire du monde de l'entreprise s'avère plutôt sympathique mais encore trop mollassonne ... Hélas, on reste quand même sur notre faim pour ce qui est du carnage proprement dit (enfin, plutôt sale) car malgré son heure vingt (hors générique de fin) ce petit film rame décidément beaucoup trop... La faute au scénario qui n'a pas du tout reçu les mêmes attentions que le reste... la voix off tombe à plat, les dialogues sont ridicules, les comédiens sont très mauvais et la jolie blonde reste trop habillée (une jupe pareille pour la baston, t'es sérieuse là ?). Malgré une idée de départ très alléchante et une réalisation agréable, ça pédale donc un peu trop dans le vide.

Very comparable to Belko Experiment but Mayhem focuses much more on being a dark comedy than just being a dark drama. The cast (especially Yeun and Weaving) do such an amazing job at elevating the average material they were good and it is well directed. It's not perfect but it's some mindless fun.