Severance Will Be Your New Mind-Warping Mystery Obsession

At mysterious biotech firm Lumon Industries, sure workers are given a mind implant that retains their work selves utterly separate from their private selves, with no shared reminiscences between them. The process provides Apple TV+’s new thriller its title, Severance, and it places in movement the present’s excellently eerie drama.

Set in snowy Pennsylvania, Severance follows Lumon worker Mark Scout (Adam Scott), who’s chosen to be among the many firm’s completely “severed” staff as a way of dealing with the great grief he feels over shedding his spouse in a automobile accident. It’s the last word technique to compartmentalize one’s emotions: on the elevator experience to his workplace, his mind switches from the “outie” model of him (lonely, morose, has a ingesting downside) to the “innie” model, a peppy firm man who’s simply been promoted to steer “macrodata refiner.” If that sounds nebulous, it’s; the job principally entails watching numbers floating on a display screen, and none of Mark’s co-workers—who’re all handled kind of like kids by the higher-ups—know what the numbers imply and even what kind of information they’re “refining.”

It is a fully bizarre office—and that’s not simply restricted to the precise work. Lumon HQ is a maze of sterile white hallways that result in numerous windowless rooms, plus odd touches like a reliance on outdated know-how (cassette tapes, computer systems which might be undoubtedly not state-of-the-art) and a hefty aspect of wryly humorous, Office Space-ish company satire (waffle events as a efficiency incentive). There’s additionally the hovering presence of Lumon’s late founder, a cult-like determine whose clichéd but vaguely threatening nuggets of knowledge propel the corporate tradition, and who in some way constructed his topical salve enterprise into a large biotech that does… effectively, no one’s certain what it does. At least Mark doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care—till the 2 sides of his divided thoughts begin to suspect that maybe one thing very, very dangerous is happening.

Lumon is so much to absorb at first, however Severance—written and created by Dan Erickson, with a number of episodes directed by Ben Stiller, who’s additionally one of many govt producers—properly provides us an entry level with new rent Helly (Britt Lower). Her “outie” enthusiastically accepted the job and willingly submitted to the severance process, however her “innie” is useless sure she is totally not lower out for working at Lumon, and units about attempting to flee and/or resign nearly instantly. We additionally meet the individual Helly has been introduced in to interchange: Mark’s former workplace bestie Petey (Yul Vazquez), whose sudden absence at work is upsetting—however whose sudden look in Mark’s “outie” life, the place after all Mark doesn’t acknowledge him, is much more upsetting.

Severance succeeds on a number of ranges—there’s the peculiar thriller at its core revolving round “the truth about what’s going on down there,” as Petey refers to it: particularly, what the hell is Lumon Industries actually as much as? Mark’s work appears so mundane, not one thing so secretive and delicate that he must be required to separate his thoughts in half over it; clearly there’s much more to this puzzle that Severance will tease out over its nine-episode run. And the thought of putting up with a mind implant that principally transforms one individual into two can also be fascinating and disturbing. The expertise is vividly dropped at life by Scott’s nuanced efficiency—he’s enjoying the identical man carved into two totally different characters, and you may’t assist however root for them each to work out what’s occurring and are available again collectively.

Certain different characters who aren’t severed however are additionally a part of Mark’s life solely deepen the intrigue—notably Patricia Arquette’s slippery, formidable, fantastically creepy Lumon supervisor. Truly, the complete supporting forged is nice, together with John Turturro and Zach Cherry as Mark’s longtime workmates; Lower and Vazquez as his extra unstable colleagues; Tramell Tillman and Christopher Walken as a Lumon workers who aren’t precisely what they appear to be at first; and Jen Tullock as Mark’s closely pregnant sister, his solely grounded connection to life outdoors of Lumon.

The solely dangerous factor we are able to say about Severance is it is a present you may be dying to binge, and also you gained’t have the ability to, not less than in the event you begin watching it now. The first two episodes of Severance start streaming in the present day; the remaining seven episodes will roll out weekly on Apple TV+.

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