Work Sucks. Swedish Slasher The Conference Cuts It To Pieces
Patrik Eklund adapts Mats Strandberg’s cutthroat The Conference into a splendid addition to the “Worksploitation” canon. You’ll detect shades of Christopher Smith’s Severance, turning a corny work retreat into a bloody outing with coworkers. The tenets of Worksploitation are honored through corporate skewerings that indulge a capitalist nightmare with satire too close for comfort, from shady legislative practices to selfish power-trippers. Work sucks, but Workspolitation horror movies like The Conference take gnarly swings at frustrating workplace cultures by offering pitch-black catharsis in a slasher package.
The film follows Swedish municipal employees attending a team-building conference before groundbreaking their massive shopping mall project. It’s part planning, part celebration—daytime meetings morph into boozing and hot tubbing by night. Unfortunately for the attendees, their getaway is anything but business as usual. A masked maniac dressed as the mascot for their new Kolarängen property starts slaughtering retreat staff and participants without telling who will get the ax next.
As a woodland slasher, The Conference is violently sharp and fiercely shot. Simon Rudholm’s crisp cinematography accentuates the surrounding forests that sequester the area for miles, framing the killer’s brutality with emphasis. Eklund co-writes a screenplay with Thomas Moldestad that doesn’t overcomplicate the scenario beyond dodgy business practices that possibly attract a madman hellbent on revenge, helping the story lunge forward without hesitation. Pacing is steady, tension is palpable, and it’s not long before we’re plunged into chaos.
Worksploitation filmmakers sometimes exaggerate business misdeeds to a cartoonish and weaker regard, but The Conference hits a relevant nerve. Its players bring out the worst in their caricatures of office stereotypes that recall our own water cooler nemeses. Adam Lundgren makes our skin crawl as a project manager who takes credit for everyone else’s work. Maria Sid as boss Ingela is always one sentence away from calling her employees “family” in that gross “we’ll exploit your loyalty” way. Coming from a nine-to-fiver with a day job outside writing, Eklund nails the cubicle hardships and rotten corporate inhumanity that hides behind paltry rewards like Casual Friday. Questions about forged documents and farmers pushed off their land are nasty enough to “justify” the slasher structure, but not by overblowing the evilness behind the boardroom doors.