The Belko Experiment

Plot

Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.), an employee of Belko Industries, arrives at his remote office building in rural Bogotá, Colombia, to find unfamiliar security guards turning away the local Colombian staff at the gate. Mike — like his girlfriend Leandra (Adria Arjona), chief operating officer Barry (Tony Goldwyn), and everyone else at the non-profit company — has been there for a little over a year. New employee Dany (Melonie Diaz) reports for her first day on the job, and is told that a tracking device is implanted in the base of every Belko employee's skull in case they are kidnapped. This is common in Colombia due to the high level of drug trafficking and Belko being a wealthy company.

Evan (James Earl), Belko's head security guard, does not know who the new security guards are, nor why the Colombian staff have been barred from entering. Mike also sees the guards moving in and out of an airplane hangar next door. He tells Evan and both are confused.

With the local staff gone, the eighty employees left at the office go about their day as usual. Once the eightieth employee shows up for her job, a voice on the intercom then instructs the co-workers to kill two of their co-workers, or else more will be killed at random. Several staff attempt to flee the building, but steel shutters suddenly rise up, sealing off the outside walls and doors and locking them all in. They ignore the announcement at first, believing it to be a prank, but four employees die when explosives hidden in their trackers detonate and blow their heads apart. The employees believe the deaths are due to sniper fire at first, but Mike realizes the actual cause and attempts to remove his tracker with a box cutter. Warned by the voice that he too will die unless he stops within ten seconds, Mike gives up the idea.

The group is next told that unless thirty of them are dead within two hours, sixty will be killed. They split into two factions, led by Mike and Barry; Mike believes that there should be no killing, while Barry intends to follow the directions in order to prevent more deaths. Barry and his group attempt to burn off the lock of the armory in order to gain access to its weapons, as Evan refuses to hand over the keys. Mike and his group, including Leandra, Evan, and tech worker Keith (Josh Brener), try to hang banners from the roof of the building as a call for help, but soldiers outside shoot at them, hitting Keith in the hand. The voice warns that unless they stop, all involved will be killed, forcing them to abandon the plan. Barry, executive Wendell (John C. McGinley), and employee Terry (Owain Yeoman) knock Mike out, kill Evan, and take Evan's keys to the armory.

With his group now armed, Barry orders everyone down to the lobby and tries to calm them down. He and Wendell select thirty people, including Mike, forcing them to kneel in a line. He begins executing them with a gunshot to the back of the head. Dany, who has been hiding in the basement, hears gunshots and goes up to the floor, sees what is happening, and runs back to the basement. She shuts off the building's lights before Mike and several others are killed.

Barry and Wendell hunt down the fleeing employees, as the voice informs them that only twenty-nine have been killed. Terry attacks Leandra, but she gains the upper hand and opts to spare him, only for the two-hour time limit to run out. Terry and Keith, along with twenty-nine other employees, have their trackers explode, leaving only a few survivors. The voice informs them that the one who kills the most people by the end of the day will be allowed to walk out alive. The voice lists the people who have killed the most. Barry, Wendell, and Vince (Brent Sexton), the head of human resources, begin killing indiscriminately. Another employee, Marty (Sean Gunn), collects the unexploded trackers from the heads of people who have died by other methods, planning to use them to blow up the wall. Marty groups up with Leandra, but is soon killed by Wendell. Leandra manages to kill Wendell, and Mike takes the trackers. While Mike and Leandra escape, Barry kills Vince and Dany, and shoots Leandra, who dies from her wound shortly after. Mike and Barry are left as the only two survivors.

In a rage, Mike chases Barry. The two fight briefly and Mike kills Barry with a tape dispenser. The building is then unsealed, as he is the last survivor, and the soldiers escort him to the hangar next door. There, he meets the owner of the voice (Gregg Henry), who introduces himself as a social scientist who believes that discoveries about human nature can only come from placing people in extreme environments. As he and his colleagues begin to ask Mike about his emotional and mental state, Mike notices a panel of switches that correspond to the eighty employees. Having planted Marty's trackers on the soldiers and the Voice, he charges across the room and flips every switch except his own. The trackers explode, killing the soldiers. Mike picks up a gun and kills the other scientists before killing the injured Voice, then leaves the warehouse in a state of shock. The view zooms out to reveal that Mike is one of many sole survivors from similar experiments, being watched by another group through security cameras. A new voice states that "stage one is complete" and "stage two will now commence."

Cast

Production

Gunn began writing the film after waking up from a dream of an office building being enclosed in metal walls and hearing a voice instruct employees to kill each other. Initially Gunn wrote the film (as The Belco Experiment) prior to directing the 2010 film Super, although he backed away from the project once it got greenlit, owing to getting a divorce around the same time. Says Gunn "I just wanted to be around my friends and family. I didn't want to go shoot this thing that was about people who loved and cared about each other being forced into killing each other. It just didn't seem to be the way I wanted to spend the next few months of my life. So I backed out of it." As Gunn's name became bigger and bigger he had "kind of forgotten about it" until he received a call from Jon Glickman at MGM asking if he would still be interested in making it.

Much of the cast was announced in May 2015 including John Gallagher Jr., Tony Goldwyn, and Melonie Diaz. More joined the cast in June, including David Del Rio, Stephen Blackehart, Josh Brener, and Rusty Schwimmer.

Filming

Principal photography on the film began on June 1, 2015, in Bogotá, Colombia. and concluded on July 12, 2015.

Release

The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2016. Shortly after, Blumhouse Tilt and Orion Pictures acquired U.S distribution rights to the film, and set it for a March 17, 2017, release. It was released to UK theaters on April 15, 2017.

The film was promoted through a series of four claymation shorts directed by Lee Hardcastle which according to website, io9, which they debuted on, "features exaggerated versions of The Belko Experiment’s characters, and offers a taste of the level of violence and humor you’ll see when the actual movie" The movie was also promoted with a video game, "Belko Experiment’ Escape Room in VR" released for virtual reality platforms.

Box office

In the United States and Canada, The Belko Experiment was released alongside Beauty and the Beast and was projected to gross around $4 million in its opening weekend. It made $305,000 from Thursday night previews and $1.5 million on its first day. It went on to open to $4.1 million, finishing 7th at the box office.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 53% based on 78 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Belko Experiment offers a few moments of lurid fun for genre enthusiasts, but lacks enough subversive smarts to consistently engage once the carnage kicks in." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score 44 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".