The European sales division of Palisade Defence are on a team-building retreat. You know the kind, paintball, motivational lectures, walks in the woods... those things. But a wrong turn leads them to the wrong lodge in the woods, and its residents don't like Palisade Defence.
So they must die.
Chased thru the woods, beaten, alone (sometimes together) the surviving members of the team must survive.
Even if we might not want them to.
Don't even look for novelty here, the standard slasher conventions apply, the novelty is the quality of the comedy. It's a sharp blend of sarcasm, sunny stupidity, and sight gags- which considering the amount of blood involved in some of them, you might gag, too. The death scenes aren't the most original (although the bear trap is pretty darn funny), but they're well filmed and paced perfectly.
Danny Dyer and Laura Harris play Steve and Maggie the (respectively) stoned and good-hearted employees trapped in the woods whist sharp objects are trust in their general direction and bear traps abound in the woods. Both have a grounded approach to their characters, and both entertain and they try (with varying degrees of success) to lead their team to safety. And the killers aren't amateurs, they're seasoned professionals. The cold precision of the murders lends a genuine sense of dread and suspense to what could easily be written off as a light lark through a graveyard, and Harris is an excellent and straightforward heroine to Dyer's bumbling hero.
This was easily one of the audience favorites of the festival as the humor and the gore worked seamlessly to entertain and to educate the audience on the cutthroat business of comedy. Talk about a bad day at the office.
Famous Last Words: This is my kind of comedy. Bloody. Is that so wrong?
