FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: THE BUTCHER (2007)

THE BUTCHER (2007)
Dir. Kim Jin-Won, 75 mins

For all the movies from Japan we've been lucky enough to highlight here at Film Gutter, it's actually surprisingly rare that we've ever headed to the nearby shores of South Korea. In fact I think our only viewings from this country have been short films, but today's movie might do something to rectify that. We're bringing the focus now to The Butcher, an extreme horror offering that has a plenty nasty enough reputation to live up to. But will it justify the fuss that has come with it?

The movie itself follows two groups – a husband and wife couple unfortunately captured by three people looking to make a snuff movie, and the trio who have captured them in order to make their on-demand 'film' at the behest of a director who calls a number of times. The whole thing itself is about as grim and grimy as you could imagine, with the action being shot either on a handheld camera by the captors or cameras attached to helmets placed on the victims. I will certainly say the second is a nice touch of originality, and something I've not seen before, so I do give some props for that.

However that does mean the whole premise of the movie is a real double-edged sword – the production style and design makes it feel almost legitimately like the production of a snuff movie, probably closer than anything barring American Guinea Pig: Bouquet of Guts and Gore. The way the movie is shot does give it a certain sort of authenticity, but with the camera jolting and juddering around all the time it gave me a headache even at its short runtime. It also gives the whole thing a sense of absolute chaos, which is probably what the director was intending, but it is genuinely difficult to tell what's going on numerous times throughout. There's nobody to really care for or care about – the character development is far too rough and ready for that, and even the husband (as the person we come to follow in the main) feels fairly irredeemable by the end of it all. It's maybe a deliberate creative risk to play with that good guy/bad guy standard, but it doesn't land here.

There are some genuinely nasty moments – especially when the pig-masked third character enters the fray – but the first half hour or so doesn't really kick into any sort of full gear, which given the short runtime feels a bit egregious. Surely we could have got the ball rolling a bit sooner here, or maybe even cut the runtime? Even at 75 minutes it feels a little overlong for what it is, and I wonder if some of it was improvised because it meanders plenty. I think ultimately this was just too chaotic and too confusing to really get that much out of, and I couldn't really connect with any of the characters to hate them or feel sympathy for them, which severely hampered any emotional impact it was trying to have. If you are really into down and dirty, noisy and in your face horror this could be up your street, but this one didn't really cut it for me.


RATING: 5/10. I don't want to go too hard on this one, because I can respect and indeed understand what it is that the director was angling for here. There were little flourishes I liked along the way, but overall the unsteady camera made me feel a little nauseous and rendered a lot of the action really hard to comprehend. The acting wasn't bad – everyone who was captured certainly seemed to be plenty distressed throughout! – but I do feel like the people involved were maybe let down by the script and the overarching story here. This appears to be about the only work by this director, which is kind of a shame, because while this wasn't a slam dunk there were some flourishes here that suggested there could have been better going forward. For all the reservations I had, I do feel like other viewers might get more out of this one than I did, so I'll grade this one a down the middle 5/10.