Mayhem

 So this is one I've had in the backlog for ages - it looked good, but a bit too slick, too glib. It also seemed too similar to The Belko Experiment. I shouldn't have worried; I mean, it *is* way too slick and too glib, but that's ok, it's also a lot of fun. And it's not that similar to The Belko Experiment.

 A would-be abrasive horror comedy that plays it extremely safe? That dares cast corporate execs (at a law firm!) as evil? Well, yeah, it's not going to win any points with those looking for originality or edgy stuff. But once you get past all that, there's a lot to like here.
 The premise, for one: as a fun narrated intro explains. a mysterious pandemic is raging through the world (have in mind that this came out in 2017.) Called Redeye because it causes ocular hemorrhages, its main effect is to lower inhibitions, enabling "emotional hijacking" - so that's cool, it's basically a petty weak rage virus, or like the Crazies if the Crazies were more Mildly Hysterics.
 So when it strikes it's closer to a drunken mob/orgy than a massacre. BUT: in a landmark case, a dude who killed another dude while infected was exonerated of all charges.

 This is all just the background. Our protagonist Derek (Steven Yeun,) a once idealistic young lawyer who's abandoned his principles to rise in the firm's hierarchy by basically becoming evil, is caught up in a political ploy and unceremoniously dropped to the wolves like an ugly baby.
 But just as he's being escorted outside, SWAT teams arrive escorting medics and health workers and cordon off the building: There's an outbreak of the Redeye virus, and for the next eight hours everyone needs to remain inside.

I like this shot, zooming in on their 'infected' eyes (for some reason, people only get one red eye)

 You can see where this is going, right? Derek, acutely aware that he can literally get away with murder while infected, decides to go up to the penthouse and kill everyone who wronged him. On the way he meets a ridiculously beautiful lawyer (Samara Weaving) whom he'd previously screwed over in a family home foreclosure (in a scene designed to establish just how low he'd sunk kowtowing to the corporate overlords.) He gets her on his side by promising to undo the foreclosure, and off they go, armed with a bunch of maintenance equipment, to paint the cubicles red.

 As an aside, it's easy to imagine what, say, Sam Raimi would have done with this setup, the amount of comeuppance Derek would have piled upon him in his hypocritical quest for revenge. But nope, this movie settles on the much more simplistic tack that he's actually turned a new leaf and is now a good person (who's basically using the virus as an excuse to commit a bunch of killings.)
 It's still a good premise, but with no follow-through. Seriously, don't expect any sort of depth here. It's a dumb movie with a plot that soon settles on "Get to floor five so you can beat the head of HR, to get his keycard that will allow you to get to floor 7, where you can beat up this other person you wanted revenge on and get her keycard, which in turn..."
 Yeah, basically a bad videogame plot. But it moves at a clip, providing enough incident and inventive and colorful carnage... which, honestly, is all it needs to do. It also gets a lot of mileage out of the titular mayhem, like a bunch of office nerds gone feral trying to cash in the bounty on our hero's head, or a lot of incidental background nuttiness.
 My favorite: a dude going around the office, saying "fuck you! fuck you! FUCK YOU! You're cool. Fuck you!" That made me laugh out loud.

 Samara Weaving is a highlight - she's very much a male fantasy designed for the hero to get with at the end. But she has a lot of fun with her character, a lawyer who lists "Motorhead, DRI and early Anthrax" as her favorite bands and decides to go along with the ride, laughing like a complete knucklehead at random acts of brutality.

 The script does have its good moments, but aside from its lack of balls it also gets little too cute with the narration, including a pretty didactic ending complete with a message not to be an asshole. It's a shame the movie doesn't do anything more with its subversive premise, but, well, being entertaining goes a long distance in this sort of thing.