Okay, I’ll give everyone a break from the political posts and do another film review. This past weekend a friend and I watched the 2017 action/horror/comedy Mayhem starring Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving.

Derek (Yeun) is a rising corporate lawyer in the mega-firm of TS Consulting whose career is ruined when he is selected to take the fall for legal fumbles he had nothing to do with. Melanie (Weaving) is a woman desperate to save her family home from foreclosure by the faceless sociopathic firm. When a virus that fully inhibits inhibition and impulse controls permeates the towering building that houses TS Consulting the facility is quarantined for 8 hours to allow a neutralizing element to eradicate the infection. Due to legal precedent already established by TS Consulting itself no person is legally responsible for any of their action while infected giving Derek and Melanie, now improbably teamed up, a ticking clock to fight their way to the boardroom when the nine partners can change their doomed fates.

Directed by Joe Lynch and written by Matias Caruso Mayhem is a *fun* movie. Notwithstanding the copious amounts of blood, sex, and brutal violence, the tone of the film is light and satirical. Yeun and Weaving give us personable characters to empathize with and to root for while the corporate baddies sitting in their corporate offices doing corporate-y things are perfectly serviceable stand-ins for the faceless, joyless, and scruple-less bureaucracy that destroys lives in a mindless pursuit of profit and power.

Filmed in Serbia with a limited budget Mayhem through the excellent craft of director Lynch, cinematographer Steve Gainer, and production designer Mina Buric it has the appearance of a film with a much more substantial budget. Particularly impressive are the invisible visual effects. The virus causes infected people to have one terribly bloodshot eye and throughout the film everyone’sbloodshot eye is a CGI effect.

Unlike the previous Joe Lynch movie I have watched Knights of Badassdom Mayhem finds and nails the right ending for its tone making the experience of watching it quite enjoyable.

Mayhem, including a version with a commentary track featuring Lynch and Yeun, is currently streaming on Shudder,