Read @ Joe’s

Title: Corporate Retreat (2026) Director: Aaron Fisher Writer: Aaron Fisher // Kerri Lee Romeo Studio: Passsage Pictures IMDb Plot: Corporate executives on a team-building retreat face a deadly struggle when their leader turns violently against them. Joe Says: To borrow the most corporate criticism possible: this could have been an email. And probably a short one at that.

For anyone who has survived endless Zoom calls, motivational seminars, or a manager who describes themselves as a “thought leader,” a horror movie premise set within such an establishment sounds like therapeutic cinema. Just ask Sami Raimi. As such, Corporate Retreat arrives with a killer idea: trap a bunch of c-level execs in a nightmare team-building exercise and start crossing names off the org chart. Unfortunately, Corporate Retreat ends up feeling more like a meeting that should have ended an hour ago.

The true horror of the situation is that the film can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be. Directed by Aaron Fisher, who co-wrote the screenplay with Kerri Lee Romeo, Corporate Retreat swipes through genres like someone clicking through a PowerPoint presentation. Revenge thriller? Workplace satire? Torture horror? Dark comedy? Ultimately though, it all feels like scope creep in a project management plan. 

The setup is promising. An ousted CEO, played by the always-entertaining Alan Ruck, returns to inflict “revenge through enlightenment” on the employees he believes betrayed him. The current leadership team – led by new CEO Devin (Benjamin Norris) – is packed with entitled, self-important climbers who all look much too young to be interns let alone execs. The film introduces them with playful title cards and a cartoonish energy that suggests Office Space by way of The Cabin in the Woods. Sadly, that playful tone vanishes almost immediately and never finds its way back.

Thus the movie’s biggest problem: tone management. The marketing sells horror-comedy, but the comedy never truly hits the stage. The horror never arrives either. Instead, the film settles into a repetitive cycle of punishment and mutilation that feels closer to a watered-down Saw knockoff than anything suspenseful. Eyeballs are removed. Arteries are sliced. Needles puncture. People scream. Yet none of it lands because the movie never creates tension, dread, or even base curiosity about what happens next.

Ironically, the film’s most compelling character is Ginger, played by a wide-eyed Odeya Rush. She is an outsider to the corporate system, a psychology student accidentally brought in as a plus-one. Similar to Samara Weaving in Ready Or Not, Ginger’s the only person who approaches the situation with anything resembling common sense. The screenplay positions her as the de facto final girl. Yet even that arc feels contrived as opposed to, say, Anya Taylor-Joy’s character in The Menu, who although also an outlier defiantly earns her reward (and final meal).

Fisher clearly knows how to make a movie look good. The cinematography is sleek. The production design is polished. The movie has a full-on visual heft that narratively it does not deserve. 

Corporate Retreat could have been a meaner satire. A sharper comedy. A nastier horror movie. Instead, the film spends so much time referencing better movies and borrowing familiar ideas that it forgoes building an identity of its own. The end result is a stylish but empty exercise in workplace carnage.

To borrow the most corporate criticism possible: this could have been an email. And probably a short one at that.

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Be sure to punch in early and check out this review on Cinefied.