‘Butchers’ Fails to Execute
Feb 24, 2021
Strike Media
From its opening scene, Adrian Langley’s Butchers promises to be a bleak, nihilistic slasher film. Unlike many of its kind, the film does not waste any time introducing an overly cheerful spectacle of false hope. Instead, Langley tells us that darkness is inevitable on these backroads. Perhaps hope exists somewhere out there. But it doesn’t exist here.
At the beginning of Butchers, Celeste (Samantha De Benedet) and her boyfriend Steven’s (Blake Canning) car breaks down on a snowy dirt road. As soon as Steven gets out of the car to check the damage, he is bludgeoned to death by a vicious stranger wielding a shovel. Celeste’s luck isn’t much better: she is kidnapped by the butcher and chained to a hook in a dark, dank room where she is subsequently raped and impregnated.
We are then introduced to a whole new cast of characters: Jenna (Julie Mainville), Taylor (Anne-Carolyne Binette), and their boyfriends, Christopher (Frederik Storm) and Mike (James Hicks). The quartet is on the final legs of a road trip, and, surprise, surprise: their car breaks down, just like their unlucky predecessors. Another surprise: they run into the same sadistic killers, Owen (Simon Phillips) and Oswald (Michael Swatton), that seem to govern these back roads. And you can rest assured that these killers have beef with the innocent road-trippers.
Though Butchers is admittedly engaging and artfully crafted, by the time it reaches its bloody climax, it has not yet subverted any horror genre expectations. Car breaks down in an unsavory spot? Check. People go to search for help in sketchy territory? Also check. They split up? Double check. The feisty female protagonist turns out to be the best match for the sadistic murderers? You already know what we’re gonna say.
At the beginning of Butchers, Celeste (Samantha De Benedet) and her boyfriend Steven’s (Blake Canning) car breaks down on a snowy dirt road. As soon as Steven gets out of the car to check the damage, he is bludgeoned to death by a vicious stranger wielding a shovel. Celeste’s luck isn’t much better: she is kidnapped by the butcher and chained to a hook in a dark, dank room where she is subsequently raped and impregnated.
We are then introduced to a whole new cast of characters: Jenna (Julie Mainville), Taylor (Anne-Carolyne Binette), and their boyfriends, Christopher (Frederik Storm) and Mike (James Hicks). The quartet is on the final legs of a road trip, and, surprise, surprise: their car breaks down, just like their unlucky predecessors. Another surprise: they run into the same sadistic killers, Owen (Simon Phillips) and Oswald (Michael Swatton), that seem to govern these back roads. And you can rest assured that these killers have beef with the innocent road-trippers.
Though Butchers is admittedly engaging and artfully crafted, by the time it reaches its bloody climax, it has not yet subverted any horror genre expectations. Car breaks down in an unsavory spot? Check. People go to search for help in sketchy territory? Also check. They split up? Double check. The feisty female protagonist turns out to be the best match for the sadistic murderers? You already know what we’re gonna say.
Strike Media
