Ben Stiller’s strongest directing makes workplaces unsettling without losing the humour. We rate the patience and visual precision of Severance, though its first season takes too long to get going.
Fi1m perspective
Lumon’s offices in Severance (2022) look familiar enough to make their oddness worse. We were unsettled by the difficulty of placing those rooms in any recognisable period, which denies us even the small reassurance of knowing roughly where we are. Stiller’s directing is most persuasive here, taking the workplace seriously enough to make its absurdity frightening. He and fellow director Aoife McArdle give discomfort time to register, rather than hurrying towards the next joke. The humour survives, but it does little to put us at ease.
His route to this kind of television begins in sketch comedy, with The Ben Stiller Show (1992–1995), before his feature debut, Reality Bites (1994). The Cable Guy (1996), Zoolander (2001) and Tropic Thunder (2008) belong to the long stretch of comedies that followed. The miniseries Escape at Dannemora (2018) marks the move towards the television work that includes Severance. We would be wary of treating that move as a comedian finally becoming serious. His ability to handle comedy and unease together is what makes the television worth watching.
Jeremy Hindle’s production design gives Lumon its retro-futurist character, and Stiller benefits from a workplace that is already difficult to trust. Cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné makes the office and the outside world distinct enough that the surroundings carry part of the story. Those choices help us follow the divided-memory premise without making it feel comfortable. Adam Scott’s performance is crucial to making that premise frightening. Composer Theodore Shapiro keeps the unease present without smothering the humour, allowing the programme to stay funny without becoming reassuring.
The first season does take too long to gather pace, and we would not mistake all of that delay for confidence. A director so willing to stay with discomfort also needs to know when a scene has done enough. That is a meaningful reservation, though the workplace satire repays the patience. Start with Severance, but give it longer to get going than we would usually ask.
Biography
Ben Stiller is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. Born on 30 November 1965 in New York City, he is the son of comedians and actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.
He began his career writing and performing in mockumentaries and hosted the sketch series The Ben Stiller Show (1990–1993). Stiller has directed and starred in comedy films including Reality Bites (1994), Tropic Thunder (2008) and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013). He is also known for voice work as Alex in the Madagascar films (2005–2012) and as Larry Daley in the Night at the Museum films (2006–2014).
Stiller serves as primary director and executive producer of the Apple TV+ series Severance (2022–), for which he has directed multiple episodes across its first two seasons.
