In Corporate Animals directed by Patrick Brice and written by Peep Show‘s Sam Bain, a team-building exercise in New Mexico for an edible cutlery company goes horribly and comically wrong.
Fresh Meat
by Alexa DalbyCorporate Animals
[rating=3]
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
Demi Moore is Lucy, the duplicitous, dictatorial head of her company Incredible Edible. As a corporate team-building exercise, she insists against all advice on leading her reluctant and frightened employees into a cave system beneath the New Mexico desert. Before that, the exercise we see them attempt above ground reveals their characters before their ill-fated descent.
Jess (Jessica Williams) and Freddie (Karan Soni) discover they have been pitted against each other. Everyone else has their own issues and quirks, either personal ones or with Lucy herself, and no one wants to be there. A sudden earthquake traps them and kills their irritating guide Brandon (Ed Helms). Days pass without a sign of rescue, secrets are revealed, alliances form, hatreds rise to the surface, food and water run out and brutal survival instincts take over.
Corporate Animals is a comedy horror that’s broadly funny and occasionally not for the squeamish, basically a satirical dark entertainment (with some nice touches) involving cannibalism and murder, and not to be taken at all seriously. The unplanned spelunking experience does turn out to be team building, though not in the way envisaged. Great to find Sam Bain writing features but we could have hoped for more.
Corporate Animals premiered in the UK at Sundance London 2019.
