Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Into the Dark: A Nasty Piece of Work’ on Hulu, a Satirical Tale of Class Warfare at Christmas

Hulu/Blumhouse series Into the Dark celebrates Christmas with A Nasty Piece of Work, which pits the have-too-muches against the want-mores in the spirit of spreading tidings of comfort and joy. Seasonal colors are abundant: Green for envy, red for Santy Claus. No! Blood, actually. Lots of blood. The latter splatter means this outing meets basic Into the Dark requirements, but is it a cool, sexy new toy or just a lump of coal?

INTO THE DARK: A NASTY PIECE OF WORK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Ted (Kyle Howard) is a low-level schmuck at Falconcrest Ventures, a big corporation that does crap and stuff. I don’t know exactly. But my best guess is, it specializes in synergistic ventures. Because it’s only synergistic ventures that allow the CEO, Steven Essex (Julian Sands), to own platinum-plated golf clubs and live in a mansion that probably has its own football stadium in the basement. At the office Christmas party, everyone gathers around to hear Steven tell them they’re not getting a Christmas bonus this year, and they should enjoy “the dignity of shared sacrifice.”

Ted, seen in an earlier sequence repeatedly smashing the platinum clubs into a mirror, is one of Steven’s two lickspittles. The bad news has Ted, an everyman with an everyman suit and an everyman haircut, suppressing homicidal urges. But just as he’s about to finally indulge one, Steven invites him out to his plush palace for dinner — and there may be a plum position at the company for him. He calls his wife Tatum (Angela Sarafyan) and they head directly to the other side of the tracks.

But. Of course there’s a but. The other lickspittle got invited, too. Gavin (Dustin Milligan) is an arrogant suck-up douche of an ass, and his snobby wife Missy (Natalie Hall) indulges any opportunity to be patronizing. Before these lesser-moneyed folk can even get a nose of the Essex family’s posh booze, Steven and his wife Kiwi (Molly Hagan) turn out to be sadistic swine pitting Ted and Gavin against each other in a psychotic competition, and to the winner goes the job.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Ted character is like Clark Griswold if he was in Falling Down: screw loose, angry about the Christmas bonus. And the movie itself is like Horrible Bosses crossed with Funny Games crossed with the status-gap movie of your choice (I kinda prefer Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite myself).

Performance Worth Watching: Molly Hagan seems to be the cast member most enjoying an opportunity to be diabolically insane. You can just picture Kiwi sitting around, rich, bored, simmering a cynical broth of loathing for all other living things, and now letting it boil over.

Memorable Dialogue: No context to avoid spoilers: “Can you alibi your way into a VP position?” is an actual challenge Steven puts forth.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: A Nasty Piece of Work is too deranged to be anything but satire, and a vicious commentary on not just class warfare, but the people who are so ready and willing to participate in it. There’s a big plot hole here: When horrible shit happens, nothing is stopping Ted, Tatum, Gavin or Molly from Ubering it the hell out of there. Yet they stay. Which I guess suggests that their ethical centers are also compromised in their pursuit of lives with nicer cars and gilded toilets and golf clubs that cost as much as two Kias.

So all of these characters suck. We can’t get behind any of them, since they’re either too corrupt or too stupid to go back to their humble homes and be happy with what they have. Righteous goodness is not present in the picture, which, frankly, isn’t a prerequisite for modern storytelling — lots of origin-of-the-villain stories out there — so the onus is on the premise. And that premise is weak and hopelessly unfocused, a catch-all of haphazard occurrences for the sake of shock and chaos. Which might be OK if it was funny, or fully committed to making us really uncomfortable, but it’s neither. It’s just a belabored display of a-holes pulling the strings of desperate cretins, and it’s not all that witty or enjoyable.

Our Call: SKIP IT. A Nasty Piece of Work wastes its opportunity to be ruthlessly critical of class warfare, and is merely an assemblage of random events perpetrated by jerks.

 John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Into the Dark: A Nasty Piece of Work on Hulu