Pretty Good

Powerful

Fantastic!

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

As you can probably guess from the review title, "The Butcher" is a mishmash of at least a dozen other better (or at least more entertaining) movies. Six young people are driving to Las Vegas when one decides to take a shortcut. They suffer a car accident when a strange girl runs in front of their SUV, killing one of their own (in pretty much the best kill of the movie). Pursuing the stranger leads to an encounter with the titular Butcher.There's really not one likable character in our main group, but you don't really root for the Butcher either - not one character has a defining moment to either put you off or win you over. The most horrifying part comes at the very end, where it seems like we're going to have to sit through the whole thing again before the credits mercifully roll. The gore is tame, the plot is tedious, and the whole thing is pretty soul-less. A sense of fun or love for the genre can go a long way, but we get none of that here.PS: I decided to do a review of this one while it was still relatively fresh in my mind because I'm 90% sure I've sat thru it at least once before but it's so unmemorable and derivative of so many recent "let's make a real old fashioned 80s slasher" movies that have come out in the past few years that I'm not totally sure. At least this way, there's proof of at least one viewing.

Thankfully, I only paid $3.99 for "The Butcher" from a drug store bargain DVD bin, therefore I wasn't expecting much from it. Good thing, too, because "The Butcher" was utterly derivative, totally nonsensical, and ultimately pretty damned silly all the way through. Take a bit of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," some of "Wrong Turn," a piece of "People Under the Stairs" and boom, you've got your "Butcher." Even casual horror film viewers will say to themselves "Where have I seen this before?" at least once during its run time."The Butcher" doesn't waste much time with unimportant frills like back story or character development; it just starts with the nasty stuff virtually as soon as the opening credits are finished rolling. A group of annoying twenty-somethings (an obnoxious jock in a "popped collar" shirt, two lesbians, an African-American girl who's in a wedding dress for some nebulous reason, a "nice" guy, and a "tough" girl) are all on their way to Las Vegas for a weekend of partying. They take a supposed "short cut" (never a good idea) down a desolate country road where they're menaced by a scarred guy in a beat up truck. Popped Collar Guy takes offense at this and pursues the truck, which leads to him crashing into a tree and wrecking the car. This also causes one of the lesbians, who'd been hanging out of the sun roof, to get cut in half on a low hanging tree limb. (Ouch!) So our group is now down to five, and after a bit of arguing they set off through the countryside in search of help. Coming to a run down farm house in the middle of nowhere, these morons soon find out that the house is occupied by the "Butcher" of the title and his family of demented rednecks. Poorly staged mayhem ensues. The idiots spend half of the movie barricaded inside the killer's house (!!!), where they wander around looking at filthy rooms full of doll heads, dishes of human bones and other flotsam and saying "What is that?" "I don't know" rather than, say, trying to find the back door, or at least some weaponry to fight back against the killer. About halfway through we meet the Butcher's wife, who hides in the house's basement and who apparently went nuts due to her inability to have a child. After several more (ineffective) death scenes, the "nice guy" manages to escape the house (leaving his friends behind??? Yeah, I know...logic has no place here) and brings a sheriff to the property, but the psycho couple make short work of him and eventually we're down to "nice guy" and "tough chick" for the final showdown. Even if you've never seen the movie, you will probably be able to tell which one of them is going to get out alive."The Butcher" may not be the worst movie I've ever seen, but Lord, it isn't good. The characters are cardboard cut-outs, the killers are Xeroxed from much better films, and the whole thing just comes off pointless and repetitive. Gorehounds who aren't terribly picky may want to check it out because "The Butcher" has more than its fair share of the red stuff but most viewers will just want it to end as quickly as possible.

Are you freakin' kiddin' me? There's a lot of bad horror films out there and this is one of 'em. Sometimes the filmmakers choose to make 'em bad by purpose due to low budgets etc.. That way at least you can be entertained. "The butcher", I'm not sure about. Did they make the film this bad by purpose or do all involved crew members really suck. The acting is below average. Not the worst performances I've seen but they're not good. The director seems to have no idea on how to build suspense or how to direct for that matter. The photography is okay. Not the best but okay. The budget of 750 000 $ is spent badly, I think. With a little imagination they could have spent it much better. But all this is not the worst thing about this film. The script, oh, the script. How in Gods name a production company ever picked this script up, I'll never know. The script is just terrible, awful.. well... not good. I'll rate this film 3 out of 10. It's possible to sit through it. Just don't get your hopes up for any scares. Prepare yourselves for laughs instead.

This was one of those horror movies where you hope all the characters get killed quickly, because they're so annoying. They're not just annoying, they are annoying clichés of characters.Obnoxious frat boy? Check, he's here, let's hope he gets knocked off first. Sexy lesbians? Yup, they play that for the little bit it's worth. Logical, level-headed survivor type girl? Yeah, you'll spot her in the first two minutes. Screaming teenagers? Sure enough.This is an attempt to get some of the atmosphere of other horror movies and make it work in a mix. It doesn't work, it just comes across as a blatant ripoff without humor or originality of any kind. During the first ten minutes you'll find yourself hoping that the bad guy mops them up quick and then goes to Cancun for a vacation with some margaritas and maybe beach babes. That would have been a huge improvement over what you get, which is the worst and most predictable elements of the last ten slasher movies you saw.