Night of Violence is the feature length directorial debut of Illya Konstantin (The Void), who also co-wrote this alongside Christopher Lang. This indie horror was an enjoyable romp, but I will say that it isn't wholly original, as office based horrors are hardly a unique thing (such as Botched and Shredders).
After winning a potentially devastating lawsuit, a shady pharmaceutical company decides to hold an office party at its New York based offices for its hard working employees. Joining the event are a group of catering staff, but they have ulterior motives; donning masks, they arm themselves with weapons and begin to butcher the workers. Mild mannered Eliott (Kit Lang), best friend; jokester Rudy (Vince Benvenuto - Daredevil TV show), kindly Janelle (Abria Jackson), and coked up Rudy (Russ Russo - 10,000 A.D: The Legend of a Black Pearl) manage to survive the initial assault and begin to look for a way to escape the building. They come to realise that it may be that the only way for them to survive is to fight back against the intruders.
This had a bit of a tonally confusing start. After a lovely little prologue that shows a masked man dragging a corpse across an office floor, the film switches gears for an over the top, almost cartoonish advert from the fake pharmaceutical company, advertising a new drug that includes some extreme side effects. This made me think for the longest time that Night of Violence was going to be a comedy horror, but weirdly, this outlandish advert is the only dedicated dive into humour. The protagonists are full of black humorous dialogue, but everything that occurs is more grounded (as grounded as you can be in a horror film like this). With that abrasive advert out the way, it settles into a traditional story of office block horror. Mainly this involves the survivors bumbling around the office block looking for an exit. They travel down various identical looking corridors, attempt to leave via the entrance, head to the rooftop, head to the basement, all while being hunted by the handful of attackers. The plot has the villains being somewhat justified, at least from their perspective, but for the most part these people remain silent, a lot of their justifications theorised by Eliott who has a bit of a suspicion that the company he works for isn't the most noble. That was about it for the story, the characters attempts at escaping making up the main plot for the film.
The initial massacre scene was lovely to watch, a montage of masked people hacking their victims into bloody chunks. Armed with swords, axes and knives, these silent maniacs were vaguely threatening, but I would say the low number of around five of them didn't make for a super strong feeling of peril. Nor did the fact that only one of these people was carrying a gun, though bizarrely, there were more hand grenades than guns. In such a large building it did feel a bit contrived that the masked assailants were constantly bumping into the hapless survivors. Also contrived were the mobile phones not being able to get a signal for some reason, and that there was no outside assistance to be found, despite a large explosion early into the assault. Special effects weren't bad on the whole, a couple of CG effects that looked a little bit obvious, but there were some decent scenes of bloodshed to be found here.
I enjoyed the eighties sounding somewhat cheesy soundtrack, it fitted the film well, and I also appreciated an additional mid-credit sequence that attempts to link this office attack to a larger battle going on.
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Night of Violence was inoffensive. Obviously an indie horror, this might not have had many surprises, but the film was created competently. It might have been a bit mindless, but I enjoyed my time with this. The core motivations of the antagonists could have been better explained, and there should have been more of them, but this was a decent enough way to pass eighty five minutes. Night of Violence had its world premiere at FrightFest on 21st August in London.
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