A Psych Degree Might Save Lives, but it Can’t Save ‘Corporate Retreat’ [Review]

Chad Collins   |  

May 22, 2026

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I respect hustle. It’s not easy making a movie, let alone getting it placed in theaters across the country. Corporate Retreat, from filmmaker Aaron Fisher, has the enviable honor of being screened right now for millions of potential audience members. Now, less enviable, is how likely those same audience members are to gouge out their own eyes with a spoon. It’s a preferable fate.

Not to rag too hard, but Corporate Retreat really is the nadir of horror filmmaking. It’s not funny. Not scary. Worst of all, it squanders its premise, and is so aggressively boring, it’s hard not to identify with the torture being seen on screen. You’ll think there’s some kind of transcendence in store for enduring such suffering, but there’s nothing but regret over the cost of tickets and concessions.

Corporate executives for a nebulous tech firm—reportedly valued at over $1 billion– convene at a remote California manor for their titular, annual retreat. Par for the course, Corporate Retreat opens in medias res, gliding over the conclusive carnage before cutting back to where it all got started – conspicuously suspicious retreat staff demanding the confiscation of phones with all the tact and normalcy of a Manson acolyte.

Ginger (Odeya Rush) is there by happenstance. Chief legal officer, Cliff (Elias Kacavas), promised her a romantic weekend when, really, it was a surprise retreat for a company she doesn’t even work for. Now, of the two points of credit I’m willing to award Corporate Retreat, the bloodshed isn’t what I expected at all. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-her Rosanna Arquette augurs a slasher of sorts as she (after only one line of spoken dialogue) is gruesomely strangled in a sequestered room. But Corporate Retreat has more in line with gathering-gone-wrong fare like Would You Rather or The Invitation than it does, say, Severance.

Now, those three aforementioned titles had something to say, whether they successfully conveyed those thematic undercurrents or not. Corporate Retreat, like a Monday morning email, doesn’t. This isn’t a send-up of corporate culture or toxic masculinity, nor is it some kind of probing psychological exploration of economic uncertainty. The movie simply is. Bereft of tension, it shuffles its main players from one gruesome set piece to the next on account of Arthur (Alan Ruck, here only for a check, I imagine), the former CEO, ousted by the current leadership team.

It’s incredulous, in large part because Arthur is a late addition. He’s never even mentioned before he appears in vertical video to sermonize about the seven gateways and his hope to enlighten everyone on the retreat. The tenuously theorized mythology amounts to little beyond throwaway bible verses that barely contextualize acts of self-mutilation.

But Saw this is not. Yes, Corporate Retreat is gruesome, and the second (and last) credit I’ll give the film is for an unflinching, disgusting, foul, painful, and protracted sequence of enucleation (the surgical removal of an eyeball). It goes on for an incredibly long time, and in such squishy, bloody detail, I was ready to log into vom.com. I’m not easily rattled, but it’s genuinely one of the nastiest things I’ve seen in a theater ever.

The rest of the violence is certainly mean-spirited, but absent any thematic tether, it’s simply cruel. I didn’t particularly care about anyone involved—even final girl Ginger is a whole heap of nothing, defined exclusively by her study of abnormal psychology– but I similarly couldn’t stomach watching the sheer volume of explicit self-harm on screen in the name of horror (presumably, I don’t really know).

At least Corporate Retreat lives up to its title. I’ve been to them, and they’re hell. The movie, like its namesake, is too. Nasty, flippant, and dreadfully boring. I don’t know how this secured such a wide release, and if nothing else, that’s a success unto itself, so kudos to the cast and crew. They worked hard, no doubt, and while I wish them the best of success in the future, I won’t be around to see it. I’ll be putting in my two weeks.

Categorized:Reviews