BUTT BOY (2019): A FILM GUTTER REVIEW

DIR. TYLER CORNACK,
​99 MINS

That’s some title, am I right? But if you like the moniker, then the premise is bound to draw you in even further. Our lead character, Chip Gutchel, is a man stuck in a dead-end middle-management IT job, led by an unbearably chipper manager, and rather marooned in an unhappy marriage and home life.

Oh, and he is currently on a crazed spree of shoving anything he chooses up his ass.

Goddamn it, I loved this movie.

The main focus of the plot is Gutchel’s relationship with Detective Fox, a broken police detective who turns up to Chip’s AA group. It’s not long before Chip is Fox’s sponsor, but he doesn’t do much of a job of it – as Fox continues to decline Gutchel is mostly wrapped up in his bizarre anal rampage, putting a host of household items (and even the family dog) where the sun doesn’t shine. However when ‘bring your child to work day’ rolls around at Chip’s office, he can’t resist the temptation to lose something a bit bigger in that cavity. And his problems only get worse when Fox is assigned to the case of the missing child, and a surreal game of cat and mouse is on.

The tension between these two central characters is great, led by solid performances – director Tyler Cornack doubles as a lead actor for Chip, and does a strong job as a downtrodden man hiding a horrible secret. Tyler Rice does a fine job as Fox, who is maybe a little too much every other cop from any other movie, but delivers the stranger elements of the movie with gusto. Shelby Dash also puts in a solid stint as Anne Gutchel, and the issues in the marriage bubble away in a way that is believable, especially as Chip’s life gradually begins to unravel.

The movie is pretty gross in places – particularly in its second half – but generally builds pretty steadily, showing plenty of the home life of both characters and what led them to the situation they find themselves in. You feel a certain sympathy for both of them. By doing this, the movie – which could have been a little vapid – is actually surprisingly deep and warm. Wait, maybe that’s not the best choice of words here…

The point there stands though – there’s far more to this movie than just shock value, and as well as its emotional story there’s plenty of laughs too. The humour is plenty dark but it does have a number of hilarious moments, and often calls upon the utter weirdness of its central conceit for incidents that might make you smile wryly too. It also has a great finale which is well worth sticking around for!

It’s hard to know quite what to compare Butt Boy to – I’ve seen some people draw a line between this and The Greasy Strangler, but that doesn’t quite work for me. I feel like this has a lot more heart, or maybe just more meaning to it, and is at large a cleverer and more watchable movie to me. I’d dare to go so far as to say it’s one of the quirkiest and most interesting films I’ve seen in a long time, and probably the best thing I’ve seen in 2020 so far. It’s not long been released, so if you can get hold of this wherever you are and you like your horror/comedy distinctly off the wall, this should nicely kill another 100 minutes of lockdown…

RATING: 9.5/10. I was drawn in by the frankly bonkers idea behind this one, but what kept me watching was the interesting characters and the relationships between them and the fact I never quite knew where this one was going – even until the very final scene. It’s weird, it’s fun, and it might just ‘hit you in the feels’ when you least expect it. Ultimately it combines together a lot of what I like, including one of the most prized things for me – a great streak of originality. This sits right at the top of the charts for me – in fact it’s nowhere near the bottom… (sorry, couldn’t resist one final pun!)

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