Entertainment
Samara Weaving Made A Subversive, Extremely R-Rated Thriller Before Her Fame
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Steven Yeun became a horror icon thanks to The Walking Dead, and Samara Weaving became a scream queen thanks to movies like Ready or Not and The Babysitter. In 2017, these two teamed up to create the most subversive horror movie ever made: Mayhem, which is about killing your bosses in the most brutal way and getting away with it thanks to an insane legal loophole. It’s a fast, frenetic film that turns the zombie genre on its head, and you can now stream this macabre masterpiece for free on Tubi.
The premise of Mayhem is that Steven Yeun plays a lawyer with a very specific claim to fame. He helped set the legal precedent that those infected with the Red Eye virus (which removes inhibitions and morality but otherwise leaves intelligence intact) are not liable for what they do during this altered state.
However, he loses his job on the same day that his building is flooded with the virus, resulting in every employee being quarantined until the virus runs its course. At this point, he decides to team up with a disgruntled client (Samara Weaving) to kill his bosses, knowing full well he won’t have to face any legal repercussions for any violent mayhem he causes.
A Cast That Bleeds Pure Talent
The cast of Mayhem is lean and mean, with Steven Brand (best known for Saw X) playing the amoral boss that our plucky protagonists are determined to kill. One of our heroes is played by Samara Weaving (best known for Ready or Not), whose insanely unpredictable character serves as the film’s ultimate chaos agent. Our other protagonist is played by Steven Yeun (best known for The Walking Dead), and his character has so much charisma that it’s hard not to support his goal: getting away with murder against the worst boss you could possibly imagine.
When Mayhem came out, it impressed reviewers who were hungry for more than just another horror flick. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 84 percent, with critics praising the movie’s stylish violence and dark humor. They particularly commended the movie for tying its bonkers fictional plot to real-world economic anxieties, which serves to elevate the film without turning everything into a preachy mess.
Violence Has Never Been Sexier
I first saw Mayhem when it appeared on The Last Drive-In, the popular Shudder program hosted by horror legend Joe Bob Briggs. As Briggs described the movie, I had a bad feeling that the Red Eye virus would be nothing more than an excuse to turn characters into mindless zombies. After watching Steven Yeun’s Glenn get violently murdered on The Walking Dead (the exact point that I walked away from the show), I wasn’t really in the mood to see the actor tangle with mindless zombies yet again.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this wasn’t really a zombie movie; instead, the Red Eye virus is just a plot MacGuffin to explain why an entire building of stuffy lawyers would suddenly transform into violent killers. They aren’t mindless, either, and the fact that everyone retains their intelligence is a big part of why this movie is so scary. Instead of transforming into slow, shambling monsters, everyone in the building becomes someone with the morality and violent appetites of movie monsters like Hannibal Lecter.
I was also impressed by the bonkers premise in which our lawyer protagonist has figured out that he can attack and even kill his employers without seeing so much as a day of jail time. In this way, Mayhem channels movies like The Purge, asking viewers to consider what they would do if they had a certain amount of time (in this case, eight hours before the virus dissipates) to commit any possible crime. Anyone watching who has ever had a crazy jerk of a boss (which is basically, well, everyone watching) will also sympathize with the plight of a protagonist fighting against a broken system of capitalism in the only way he knows how.
A Freaky Film Worth Fighting For
In addition to the great premise and tight script, the movie delivers everything a horror fan could ask for: killer action, a perfect pace, and entire buckets full of blood. Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving also make the perfect onscreen team, each of them utilizing their genre experience to bring their characters to vivid, violent life. Overall, I found Mayhem to be one of the freshest horror films of the last decade, and the biggest problem with this movie is that not enough people have seen it!
You can change that by streaming this subversive horror classic for free on Tubi. Mayhem is a great movie to watch for anyone looking for a new take on an old genre or who simply wants to see two veteran performers chew the scenery in the most captivating way. Of course, it’s also the perfect movie for another group of viewers: anyone who needs a bit of catharsis after working for a terrible boss day in and day out!
