Plot: Mark Scout (Adam Scott) leads a team at Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a severance procedure, which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. This daring experiment in ‘work-life balance’ is called into question as Mark finds himself at the center of an unraveling mystery that will force him to confront the true nature of his work… and of himself.
Review: Ben Stiller is one of the most underrated directors working today. From Reality Bites to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Tropic Thunder to Zoolander, Stiller has often shown his prowess for comedy but his darker work like The Cable Guy has long been under-appreciated. In 2018, Stiller made his small-screen return with the limited series Escape at Dannemora, a taut drama that showed the comedic actor was more than capable of helming a thriller. Now, Stiller has teamed with writer Dan Erickson for the AppleTV+ series Severance which is a disturbingly dark cross between Black Mirror and Office Space. This series is by far one of the most original I have seen in some time and will absolutely give you chills in equal measure with some pretty bleak laughs.
Sometimes I start prepping for my reviews by writing up some details before I finish watching the series. With Severance, I could not put anything into writing until I had finished every one of the nine episodes of this series. While I won’t spoil any details, I can tell you that this is not a limited series but rather the first season of a longer story. Maybe it is because I have gotten accustomed to so many good event series in recent years, I was expecting this story to wrap up in nine chapters, but Stiller and Erickson’s story ends up being just the start and lays the groundwork for an intricate tale with a lot of layers to unpack. Severance ends up being the most unique debut season I have watched since Mr. Robot.
A Kafka-esque nightmare, Severance is set in a world where a company called Lumon employs a procedure that implants a device into the brains of their employees. Those workers, called Innies, then have no memory of what happens during their workday while their counterparts, Outies, know nothing of what they do as a job. Mark S. (Adam Scott) works in a department of Data Refiners along with Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry). Their former boss, Petey (Yul Vazquez), recently left Lumon and is replaced by Helly (Britt Lower). Helly’s introduction to Lumon paves the way for us to learn more about what the company does and why severance is even necessary. As the episodes progress, the line between the employees’ work and home lives begins to blur as does the byzantine corporation that they work for.
The cast is all excellent with supporting performances from Patricia Arquette, Michael Chernus, Tramell Tillman, Dichen Lachman, and Christopher Walken all adding to this tale. At the start of the series, I watched Severance as if it were a satire of corporate life, but the series evolves into something far more clever and engrossing. We have seen many movies and shows that have taken a dark edge to corporate workplaces, but Severance utilizes elements of horror and paranoia to amplify the mystery at the core of what is actually happening to these characters. I kept expecting things to unfold in a more formulaic manner but Dan Erickson and his writing staff never go for the easy resolution. Severance is also more dramatic than comedic, but there are countless moments through each episode that range from laugh-out-loud funny to subtly humorous.
The nine-episode season features six episodes directed by Stiller and the other three by Aiofe McArdle (Brave New World). Both directors manage to echo the best films about delusions and anxiety from filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski, and more. The tension never lets up from episode to episode and there are multiple moments through the season where I questioned what the hell did I just see. The retro look of the Lumon offices helps sell the surreal nature of this story as does the score by frequent Ben Stiller composer Theodore Shapiro. Stiller’s cinematographer from Escape at Dannemora, Jessica Lee Gagne, frames the transitory moments when the workers shift from their jobs to personal lives in a unique way that allows you to track where they are in a given scene. This is unlike anything Stiller has directed so far and presents a very exciting direction for him as a filmmaker.
Severance is unsettling in a way similar to M. Night Shyamalan’s Apple series Servant. Where that series is more supernatural in nature, Severance is far more grounded in presenting the psychological trauma in its characters despite the sci-fi plot device in the title. The direction from Ben Stiller and Aiofe McArdle brings to life Dan Erickson’s brilliantly original story. This is easily one of the overall best debut seasons for a series that I have seen in a long time and will assuredly be pored over and discussed as each weekly episode drops. If you are like me, you are going to finish each episode with a lot of theories and even more questions. Severance is going to make you question your own work-life balance and keep you biting your nails until the very last scene.
Severance premieres on February 18th on AppleTV+.