[The Butcher]
Plot:While driving to Las Vegas with his college friends Rachel, Liz, Atlanta, Sophie and Adam, the selfish and wealthy Mark decides to take a shortcut. Mark stresses with the driver of an old tow truck, and suddenly he sees a woman crossing the road and has a serious car accident. His friend Liz dies, and Mark and Adam run after the girl, who is wounded. The group decides to seek help while Atlanta stays with the severed body of Liz in the car. They find an old house in the woods where a family of psychopaths lives and they are chased by the insane family.

Cast:Myiea Coy, Hazel Dean, Ashley Rebecca Hawkins, Bill Jacobson, Tiffany Kristensen, April Lang, Annie Mackay, Tom Nagel, Alan Ritchson, Nick Stellate, Pej Vahdat, Catherine Wreford.

My Thoughts:Been there, done that.

Review:Edward Gorsuches "The Butcher" is one of those slasher films that has a chance upon liftoff, but once in the air, it hits major turbulence and then crashes into a field somewhere. The movie starts off with potential, but squanders it quickly, and effortlessly. The film follows a group of kids, an asshole, a nice guy, a nice girl, two lesbians whom are a couple, and a black chick who's about to partake in a Vegas wedding, hence the groups road trip to Vegas. Being that this is a horror film, the kids of course aren't smart enough to just fly to Vegas but instead decide to drive through rural america to get there.

Everything goes smoothly until they hit a piece of wood with barbed-wire wrapped around it which was sitting in the middle of the road. Hmmm.....wonder how that got there? After the nice girl changes the tire, they continue on their way. That is until the asshole guy decides he wants to play a strip card game while behind the wheel. This leads to one of the lesbian girls taking her top off and standing up out of the cars retractable roof. That turns out to be a big mistake when a woman crosses in front of their speeding vehicle.

Simultaneously with a truck with a bison skull attached to the front of it nearly running the kids off the road. During the swerve and avoid session, the lesbian girl gets sliced in half by a wayward tree branch after the car spins out into the woods. Now with a dead friend on their hands, night setting in, and the terrified girl who crossed the road...they need help. Enter a trip deep into the woods to find help. Which leads the kids to a gothic-looking farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. If you guessed that the farmhouse is inhabited by a redneck psycho who likes to butcher people, then you are correct.

If you guessed that these moronic teens have walked right into a trap set by a psychotic redneck family, then you are correct. If you guessed that this movie sucks...then you again, are correct. "The Butcher" takes everything we've learned not to do from films such as "Wrong Turn" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and does it all over again. In pretty lame fashion I might add. There's nothing original about this movie, and the characters, while their personalities (except for the prick) are likeable, their common sense is nonexistent. Of course this results in getting them killed, as well it should.

But you'd really expect a movie like this to atleast try to get original at some point. But it doesn't even try. How many nutty rural dweller horror films can people put out in a two year period? It seems like every week, there's a new one. Although "The Butcher" was originally completed back in 2006, it came at a time where this genre was played out. And it still is as of 2008. The only thing to like about this film for anyone would be for the gorehounds, who are really fans of films where people are dismembered and chopped up. There's one scene in the movie where a victim is dismembered.

That should satisfy those folks, but for the rest of us.....this film is crap. Everything is predictable. Anything you expect to happen, most likely will happen. It's certainly not a film where any thinking is required. You could smoke a few joints while watching, and still in the cloud of pot smoke, be able to stay one or two steps ahead of the plot before everything unfolds. The biggest issue with "The Butcher" though is it's "CSS" scenes. "CSS" standing for for "Can't See Shit." The nighttime scenes in the darkened farmhouse are poorly shot, and poorly lit.

You can barely see the actors, and it's just like trying to see what's going on inside a tied up garbage bag. If everything after the films first ten minutes wasn't bad enough, the ending has the audacity to suggest sequel, and it also steals from the movie "Rest Stop" in a few ways. "The Butcher" is a movie for those who are madly in love with the slasher genre. If you like slasher movies enough to the point where you'll watch any horror film with a slasheresque situation, and love every minute of it...then you'll enjoy 'The Butcher". But if you're the type who can distinguish bad slashers from good ones, and won't just accept any slasher movie was decent or good, then stay away from this one. It lacks originality, entertainment value, or any sensible story. In other words, it's just another "TCM"/"Deliverance"/"Wrong Turn" clone.

Positives:The characters for the most part, had tolerable personalities, the first ten minutes showed promise.

Negatives:Everything after the first ten minutes. The plot was so cliche and had the stench of so many other slasher films all over it. It's one thing to make a film in the vein of other horror movies, but to just copy from them with no original inspiration is another. The ending was nauseating.

Overall:Half a star.





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