The Butcher

The Butcher is a brutally twisted low budget, South Korean indie film about the making of a snuff film, and shot from the perspective of both the victims and the killers.

It's a sort of pseudo-doc, where every shot comes from either the perspective of the victims (who have been kidnapped and forcibly equipped with helmet cams); the gang of killers (who either wear helmet cams or carry camcorders); or surveillance cameras (which have been set up in the pens). The exploitation of this tactic gives the whole thing an aura of realism that puts Guinea Pig to shame.

This is all going down in a disused hog farm slaughterhouse turned human abattoir- which the gang uses as their base of operations.

We watch as 2 of 4 people- who have been kidnapped, gagged and bound- are tortured and killed by these sadistic individuals.

Hilariously, at one point, the director stops to take a phone call from his wife...about going to church.

When it comes time to torture and kill the couple, the male is given an ultimatum: survive 10 minutes of whatever happens to you, and you can both leave... I suppose any deal is better than nothing, under the circumstances, but 10 minutes at the hands of a scissor wield psychopath in a pigs mask doesn't sound like a much better deal.

As you might have guessed, once the torture gets under way...we find ourselves observing, real time, from the perspective of the victim's helmet cam...which is particularly dizzying and discomforting (...though I couldn't help but laugh while he was getting raped by the pigman).

At one point- after offering up suggestions on how they should kill his wife (upon request, under duress)- the gang decides he is too twisted to kill...so they let him go. But they had booby-trapped his attempted escape route...so he doesn't manage to make it too far.

In the end, whereas he takes the brunt of the action...it's safe to say his wife fares the worst.

This is one intensely dizzying experience that is offensive on pretty much every conceivable level. For this reason- along with it's excessive amounts of brutality and gore- it's not for the easily offended, faint of heart or those who suffer from motion sickness. While not even a long film, I found that I kept checking the time and thinking: "damn, still that much more torture to go, eh? f*cking hell." With that being said, however, it is exaggerated enough to not come off too realistic. But you still feel a bit guilty up for laughing at parts, after the fact. This film literally made me feel sick, and it certainly makes you think about how media violence desensitizes you.

4 out of 10.

The Butcher (2007)

1/2 (out of 4)

Here's yet another violent, gory mess from South Korea. This one here is about a couple nut-jobs who decide to make a snuff film so they take four people hostage, torture them and eventually kill them. The killers have video cameras and they're taping the whole thing but the gimmick of this film is that the four victims have cameras mounted to their heads so we can see their point of view. THE BUTCHER is a very weak and very bad entry into the torture/porn genre, which is coming up from various countries around the world. It's funny to see how hated these films are by many yet it seems they keep turning them out. I'm really not sure where to start with this mess but I found the entire gimmick to be rather boring, ugly and it just never added up to anything. I say ugly because the way the camera was shot just gave me a headache and it became very annoying after a while. I don't mind "found footage" films but this here was just an ugly mess and especially everything dealing with the POV shots of the victims. Even more annoying is how bad the camera-work was of the two killers. I'm going to guess the camera being off the torture was so they could cover up budget things but what's the point if you're not going to see anything? You never connect to the four victims so it's impossible to feel anything for them and there's certainly nothing there to the bad guys. All in all, THE BUTCHER is a very bad example of the genre and it falls miles short of GROTESQUE, which remains the king of the genre.

Four people awaken to find that they are to be the stars of the latest movie by director Kim, a twisted sicko who specialises in making snuff films. With help from his loyal crew, including assistant Bong-Sik and a pig-masked psycho (known only as 'The Pig'), Kim attempts to create his masterpiece of brutality and death.

Inspired by first person shooter video games that allow a player to witness the action through the eyes of their character, Kim Jin-Won's The Butcher is a gruelling faux-snuff horror shot almost entirely from the point of view of its terrified victims, who have kindly been equipped with video cameras strapped to their heads in order to capture every last detail of their agonising ordeals.

This cinema verité, shaky-cam style allows Jin-Won's audience to wholly immerse themselves in an unspeakably hellish experience, all without the disadvantage of actual pain and loss of body parts.

To start with, the action is relatively restrained, the picture whipping side to side and breaking up as the victims frantically thrash around in panic, their fate gradually becoming all too apparent to them; eventually director Jin-Won really gets into the spirit of things, and once The Pig has buggered the lead character (yowch!), he lets loose with all manner of explicit vileness and acts of mean-spiritedness guaranteed to appease deviants everywhere. Amongst the stomach churning splatter on display: a chainsaw to the hand, the graphic gouging of an eye, and a multiple stabbing resulting in evisceration.

Although The Butcher doesn't quite reach the level of unpleasantness reached by Japanese torture splatter-fest Grotesque (also 2009), it provides yet another hefty slap in the face for Eli Roth and his second rate Hostel films.

7.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 8 for IMDb).

I personally don't go for the faux snuff garbage that seems to have the gore-hounds frothing at the mouth. Films (and use than therme loosely) like "August Underground" "American Guinea Pig" "Atroz" "the Brown Bunny" etc. Just leaves me shrugging my shoulders at the incompetent and stupidity of it all. This film however, really got to me. It's professionally made, sick as all hell and left me shaken and that is exactly what I want, not to be expected to revel in the carnage but to fell distressed and sickened by the atrocities on screen. This film did the job expertly and therefore it will be the benchmark I hold other films of its kind to going forward.

As a watch it represents one of utter brutally. I love it.

Hope you "enjoy" it.

This movie has a lot going for it, but ultimately doesn't do anything new. I liked the raw, gritty feel of the camera work. This movie used the first-person POV really well. It isn't a gimmick that you will say, "Why would they be filming this?" It is internally consistent. I liked the characterizations of both the villains and the victims. They all seem to make choices consistent with their characters. I also like the setting a lot. It seems plausible and fits the terror of the movie.

The issue is that, when you finally reach the end, there isn't much to remember this one by. The story has been done a number of times. The practical effects are good, but not special. The villains are threatening, but not memorable.

I liked this one and I recommend it, but its not a classic.