Introduction
Joe Lynch’s 2017 dark comedy thriller Mayhem showcases leads Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving. The film takes place predominantly in a corporate high-rise and uses a fictional virus outbreak to represent the emotional and occupational distress inflicted on workers in high-stress situations. Mayhem is a tale not just about disorder, but about one’s journey to justice and the breaking point of emotional endurance.
Though the contention may seem implausible, Mayhem employs the use of satire and stylized storytelling to address frustrations that are all too real. In particular, the film speaks to the frustrations of industrial culture, office place frustrations, and the need to assert one’s personal agency in a bureaucracy that feels indifferent and is difficult to navigate.
Story Summary
Mayhem centers on the young, talented, and ambitious attorney Derek Cho, who is a legal associate at the Towers & Smythe Consulting (TSC) law firm. Although Derek is successful at the firm, he is deeply mired in corporate and political pressures. In the process of attaining his hollywood dream, Derek is also massively losing touch with the things that are important to him as he compromised his own values to gain filed stature.
Derek was having a bad day. He was wrongfully blamed for a legal error and was getting fired. Even worse, Derek was unable to appeal his case, as the upper management wouldn’t listen.
While Derek was being escorted out, the news broke that an airborne virus, ID-7, was infecting the building and that the authorities had to implement an emergency quarantine to ensure the safety of people inside.
In the world of the film ID-7, a fictional airborne virus, has a very specific and unusual effect as well. It removes emotional filters and restraints. People who are infected can no longer suppress their impulses or frustrations. It is only a matter of time before the virus spreads and people act out their repressed emotions. Employees began to reveal their true feelings about one another, and the latent, everyday corporate tensions became exposed.
Derek perceives this unexpected situation as an opportunity. Considering how unjustly he has been fired and how he has been exploited and manipulated by powerful people in this predatory company, Derek intends to confront its most powerful people, including the executive who fired him. He also partners with Melanie Cross, a former client of the firm, who has her own problems, and has also been wronged.
For the first time, Derek, with Melanie, has the opportunity to ‘explore’ the new office building. He has to confront the heads of different departments, each representing a piece of the corporate exposure and toxic structure, and culture that has been immensely debilitating to the culture Derek now loathes. Ultimately, they redeem themselves as they progress and confront the truth, both personally and collectively, on each of the firm’s floors.
Derek (Steven Yeun) is the central character and a conflicted attorney who genuinely puts in a great effort. He is an attorney who is deeply and honestly distressed. He needs to regain the ‘accounting’ courage of the lost virtue to contest why, by all that is just, is he personally ‘abusive’?
Melanie Cross (Samara Weaving in a strong and intelligent role) is a client of the firm who helps Derek hold the firm accountable. No matter the intimidating situation, her intelligence, cleverness, and resources are her most appreciated traits.John Towers: The top-tier executive in command of the firm, and the encapsulation of a system that is rigid and hierarchical, wherein the system’s control, image, and power, and benefits from control and influence.
Kara Powell: ‘The Siren’ within the firm and one of the executives involved in the dismissal of Derek. Her presence encapsulates the definitional layers of authority that dissociate the leadership from the liability.
The supporting cast, along with human resource staff, department managers, and office assistants, are a collection of colorful office characters. Most of them, along with the staff, the virus becomes especially noticeable, and they began to reveal their true.
Ideas
- Release and Repression
The narrative device of the ID-7 virus explores the emotional repression of the characters in Mayhem. The employees of the firm are devoid of self, and dissociative in compliance with the protocol that they enfold and suppress within their frustrations, fears, and principles. When those restraints cease to exist, so too do the masks.
- Organizational Structure
The film illustrates a narrative of the more rigid mechanisms that control large conglomerates, with the stairs triggering a dissociative hierarchical structure in which each control layer is incorporated separately from the employees. This is exemplified the most in Derek and Melanie, who with each floor, new organizational control is introduced with new characters, organizing control and power in the firm.
- Moral Awakening
Derek’s story is also one of personal awakening. He is seen at the start of the film as someone who has played by the rules, even when they were unfair. Over the course of quarantine, he rediscovers a sense of purpose, understanding that integrity, self-respect, and fairness are more important than any success that can be built on compromise.
- Alliance and Trust
The partnership of Melanie and Derek serves as a reminder that shared values and cooperation are possible even in stressful situations. The film’s emotional core is built on the couple’s ability to depend on one another when all else is unstable.
- Satire of Corporate Culture
The extreme behavior brought about by the virus is utilized to reveal some of the ridiculous aspects of corporate life. Meetings that are characterized by an order of professional distance are transformed into episodes of frantic, chaotic honesty. Hierarchies that dictate every employee’s behavior become exposed and lose their power when emotional filters are turned off.
Tone and Style
Mayhem is filmed with a sense of energy and urgency. The cinematography captures the sterile side of corporate architecture and the emotional disintegration that occurs with in it. As characters undergo changes, the color palette of the film shifts in a range of more expressive tones. The extremes of corporate control are reflected in the shifting tones of the film.
Even with the underlying satire, the film is not all humor. There are a few silent, reflective scenes in which characters contemplate their lives, and there are also a few rapid scenes that simulate the quick stream of thoughts and emotions that one experiences in a moment of relief.
The brisk pacing matches the film’s narrative, which unfolds in real-time. In the office building, the characters are not only feeling the drama of their lives, but also the drama of everything possible. There is a claustrophobic quality to the confined setting but there is also the sense that all that is contained in one place is enough to alter the characters’ lives, and lives of others, forever.
Reception
The response to Mayhem from critics and audiences was appreciative yet critical. Viewers, for instance, recognized its originality, lively performances, and the metaphorical usage of a virus, while a few others thought that the film’s tone was inconsistent. Nevertheless, a considerable number of viewers liked the film’s audacity in dealing with modern work culture and its bold storytelling.
Steven Yeun’s performance, in particular, was commended for its depth and charisma. Samara Weaving also received a lot of praise for the strong character and emotional range she brought to her role.
Conclusion
Mayhem is a workplace-related story which captures systems within boundaries which one works, values which one gives up, and the emotional lives one bears under a profession. By putting dramatic characters into normal dynamics, the film explores issues of equity, bravery, and the importance of find one’s voice.
Mayhem uniquely and creatively represents the agony of the system and the lengths to which one go to reestablish meaning and honor. Mayhem is a remarkable tale, and for the audience who appreciate courageous, heartfelt, and comic storytelling, Mayhem is a uniquely and creatively captures the prominent system.
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