Severance Review — When Work/Life Balance Is Mandatory, Things Get Weird

While the subgenre may be microscopic in comparison to many others, the bubble of “corporate horror,” or horror stories that zero in on the surreal brutality of things like mega corporations or faceless bureaucracies, are pretty easy to identify when you see them. This is exactly the case for AppleTV’s latest series, Severance, which boasted some unsettling trailers with a mysterious hook: What if you could literally separate your work life from your personal life with a surgical procedure? Unsurprisingly, the answer to that question is “a lot of really messed up stuff would happen,” which is exactly what we see unfold across Severance’s first season run.

Starring Adam Scott (Parks and Rec) with Ben Stiller directing more than half of the nine episode season, Severance is about a shadowy corporation called Lumon that has pioneered the titular process. Severance, in the world of the show, is a surgical procedure in which a chip is implanted in an employees brain (don’t worry, the employees have to volunteer) which literally bifurcates their brain into two different identities. While in the office, the work brain identity–colloquially called an “innie”–is active. After leaving work, the outside brain identity, or “outie” is active. Inside the building, the innie personality cannot access any memories of the outie’s life and vice-versa.