How much of Barry's willingness to kill is due to gradual Sanity Slippage?
Also, the inevitable questions of which characters would have actually held onto their composure and morals if they had survived all the way to the final round.
Could Marty be right about the company tampering with the water cooler to cause hallucinations or alter the behavior of the employees?
Director Displacement: Some people think that James Gunn directed this film. While he wrote and produced the film, it was directed by Gregg McLean of Wolf Creek fame.
Out of all the characters, Dany appears to be the most well-liked due to her impressive survival instincts, having indirectly saved Mike and the remaining co-workers during the execution line up scene, and being one the few to not take part in the killings except for self-defense. Many were furious when Dany was anti-climatically and abruptly killed off by Barry near the end after having spent the majority of the film surviving for so long.
Evan and Marty are also pretty well-liked. Evan for being a competent, moral man who does a lot to help undermine Barry's early attempts at killing people, and Marty for his comic relief elements and attempt at Taking a Third Option by trying to disable the bombs.
It can be nice to imagine the events of the film diverging at the end of phase two (which is when Characters Dropping Like Flies really kicks in).
Dany leaving her safe hiding place in the elevator shaft (which leads to her getting shot) is such an out-of-character Diabolus ex Machina moment that many people disregard it.
He's Just Hiding: It is nice to hope that some characters may have only been Left for Dead, particularly Marty who was shot through the throat, but didn't seem to be bleeding enough to indicate that an artery had been hit and Dany given how headshots to the center of the forehead aren't always fatal in real-life.
Moe: Dany is a nervous, youthful-looking woman who just wants to get away from danger but also risks her life to help other people, and she inspires a lot of protective feelings in the process.
Moral Event Horizon: Considering the movie is about killing each other, it's bound to have examples...:
Wendell's murder of Evan, considering all Evan did was throw his keys.
Barry's entire Face–Heel Turn, from taking the weapons and then executing 30 people in the lobby. When the Voice makes it clear that he must kill everyone else to have the highest kill count, he throws logic out the window and just goes on a killing spree.
Terry basically betraying Mike and then having the gall to cry pity to Leandra after trying to execute Mike.
Let's all be honest here: the titular experiment is a big MEH due to its sole purpose being to see how humans react in hostile environments.
Narm: Zig-Zagged, and ultimately what brought the movie's reception down. Gunn's script seems to have been written as a Black Comedy that the director plays entirely straight, and the whole movie just comes off feeling vaguely uncomfortable overall.
The Scrappy: While some of the characters are liked either due to being sympathetic or because of how insane they are, Terry's very disliked due to being a tool and attempting to shift blame when Barry and his group start the lobby execution.
So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus of the film is that as a genre thriller, it's bloody and intense enough to keep you engaged, but the actual plot and characters are generally forgettable and the potential satirical themes of its premise are significantly underdeveloped.
Special Effect Failure: The bombs that Marty is picking out of the executed people's brains are very obviously just small ball bearings. They didn't even try to make them look like anything else.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The idea of a battle royale in an office setting sounds great, with plenty of opportunities for Improvised Weapons. Instead, the office has a gun-stocked armory and every worker has a remote bomb in their head, both for highly improbable reasons, and they make up a large percent of the movie's kills.
Vanilla Protagonist: Mike spends most of the movie as The Heart of the office, arguing that people shouldn’t kill each other, but, while quite likable, is a Failure Hero who doesn't say or do much that hasn’t been said or done in similar movies, while a lot of fans are more drawn to secondary characters like Leandra (an Action Girl victim of sexual harassment and Milke’s crush and closest ally), Dany (the sweet newcomer who does well with Don't Ask, Just Run methods but tries to help the others from hiding), Silk Hiding Steel matronly secretary Peggy, Bud (the Mr. Fixit played by Michael Rooker), Erudite Stoner Marty and his Older Sidekick Chet (who respond to the chaos proactively but sometimes in an Entertainingly Wrong way), Evan (the security guard struggling to keep order), Gentle Giant Vince and his Actual Pacifist token Muslim secretary Raizya, several of whom could have been an effective protagonist.
The Woobie: Pretty much all the workers endure horrific betrayals by friends, see other people they care about die, have plenty of time to dwell on their terrifying ordeal, and have their efforts to save people amount to little.
