Whichever way you look at it Butcher Boys is a disappointing film. From a writer with the pedigree of Kim Henkel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) this is a film lacking in originality that tries desperately to draw inspiration from its creator’s masterpiece.
There is a flimsy opening with four friends enjoying a meal out. One of the group Barbie (Tory Tompkins) is seen making out with a waiter while her boyfriend Benny (Derek Lee Nixon) is sat at the table with best friend Mikey (Phillip Wolf) and his sister Sissy (Ali Faulkner). It is almost immediately obvious that something bad is going to happen and that Sissy (no spoiler here as she is clearly the least annoying one) is going to be left alone and fighting for her life. This badness comes about though an ill-advised car race, an accident with a dog and being stranded in an abandoned part of town. For abandoned here we must read apocalyptically deserted apart from one or two random residents. Following these events the friends are unpleasantly dispatched by a gang of bloodthirsty murderers leaving Sissy to try and survive the night.
As I said this film is very disappointing. At times it becomes nothing more than a chase movie with the gang pursuing Sissy through various empty and decaying buildings and streets. There is little tension here though and more than enough weeping and screaming. Not once did I really care what was happening to the characters or sympathise with them, so derivative and familiar was the plot. Not once was I convinced by the peculiar and strange motives behind the gangs actions and when more is revealed the eccentric and stereotyped characters add a sense of farce to the whole production. There are hints at vampirism and lycanthropy, nods to “mad doctors” and inbred thugs, but never does it feel like you are watching something new. The lack of real explanation is not a problem as ambiguity can add to a film’s mystique but here it just feels indulgent, or worse, lazy.
The director Duane Graves tries to keep the film moving at a fast pace throughout but this just becomes tedious as the action lurches from one scene to the next with little story narrative or thought.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Ultimately Butcher Boys is a mish-mash of many other films brought together incohesively with little success. It wants some of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s tension and genuine fear and doesn’t even come close to finding it resulting in a somewhat bland and uninteresting experience.
