Butchers – Gritty & Gory
Director: Adrian Langley
Writer: Adrian Langley, Daniel Weissenberger (Screenplay)
Starring: Simon Phillips, Michael Swatton, Julie Mainville, Anne-Carolyne Binette, James Hicks
Plot: A family of sadistic butchers has dug into the back country and, from the deep freeze of winter to the dog days of summer, anyone who crosses their path is dead meat.
Tagline – Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.
Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Butchers starts when four friends, Jenna (Mainville), Taylor (Binette), Mike (Hicks) and Christopher (Storm) find their car breaking down in the middle of nowhere. As they split up into pairs to search for help, they learn they are near the Watson farm, with Owen (Phillips) and Oswald (Swatton) who has been turning people into their own meat.
The friends must learn to put their differences aside to survive the ruthless, blood thirsty group of butchers roaming the back country of America.
Thoughts on Butchers
Characters & Performances – When it comes to the young people being the victims, we get four friends, they are all going through the relationship issues, but don’t have much more created about who they are. Jenna is the one we follow the most, with her showing more fighting back ability than the rest. Owen and Oswald Watsons are the men that roam the area looking for the latest victims, Owen is the smarter of the two, while Oswald is the brute of the two. When it comes to the performances the film gets solid performances from everyone, but nothing that will standout as the best in the genre.
Story – The story here follows four friends that get stranded in the middle of the back country, where they start getting picked off by the local psychopaths looking for their next victims. This story is one we have seen before, group of friends lost in the woods being picked off by people who have evil intentions. This story offers very little new to what we are used to seeing, getting all the basics correct. We do get mystery about what the locals want and what they have done to previous victims. We do get to see the gore factor when they are unleashed, but otherwise nothing new here.
Themes – Butchers is a horror thriller that will fall into the category of, people lost in the woods, meet human enemy with evil intent. We get the gore we would expect, with a couple of graphic ideas, one comes off disturbing as people must witness it happening. The location is important for the film, where we will see the back country, which could be anyway in plenty of places in America.
Butchers is a by the book back country human horror film, with a couple of gore moments, but flat characters.
