Director: Patrick Brice
Writer: Sam Bain (Screenplay)
Starring: Demi Moore, Jessica Williams, Ed Helms, Karen Soni, Dan Bakkedahl, Isiah Whitlock Jr
Plot: CEO Lucy takes her staff on corporate team building in some underground desert caves in New Mexico. They get stuck there.
Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Corporate Animals starts as bossy CEO Lucy (Moore) is taking her staff including Jess (Williams), Freddie (Soni), Billy (Bakkedahl) Derek (Whitlock Jr), May (Kim), Gloria (Kelly), Aidan (Worthy) and Suzy (Pedrad) on a team building weekend led by Brandon (Helms) which will see them take an advanced spelunking trip, only for the group to find themselves trapped in a cave, needing to try and work together to survive, only leading to truths coming out from the workplace.
Thoughts on Corporate Animals
Characters & Performances – Lucy is the self-centred CEO that has always walked over the members of her team, she steals their ideas and forces them into doing this weekend of team building, always crossing the lines with how she approaches business. Demi Moore is one of the highlights of this film, fully committed to the self-centred figure that clearly looks down on everyone else. Jess and Freddie both believe they are fighting for the vice presidency role in the company, they bring the most team building side to staying alive, looking for solutions learning they have secrets that could both save and destroy the company. Jessica Williams and Karan Soni do have good comedy chemistry, which will go for the whole cast, each member of the cast does make us feel like we are watching an office sitcom, over a life and death situation.
Story – The story here follows a group of employees on a team building weekend, which sees them getting trapped in a cave needing to think of different ways to survive the situation they find themselves in. The story does play out like an extended episode of a sitcom, with the characters always feeling like they are just office staff placed in the cave, with the time jumps through the days only covering about five minutes of what happens, not the rest of the day, while this does work with the idea of the inexperienced group in the cave, it doesn’t make it feel like there is any urgency to escape. We seem to get more bickering than problem solving, which does become tiresome by the end.
Themes – Corporate Animals is a comedy that does feel like a sitcom, rather than the comedy horror it seems to want to be, if we want to see the work trip horror comedy done better, we just need to look at Severance which hits more of the comedy beats, instead of the slow build up sitcom arc this film sets up.
Corporate Animals does have strong performances and great chemistry, but you never feel like they are in any danger.
