Butchers (2020) by Adrian Langley

Director: Adrian Langley

Year: 2020

Country: Canada

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Slasher

Plot:

Taking a road trip through the country, a couple finds themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere and hunted down by a maniacal farmer and his crazed brother who are looking for new victims in a meat-selling scheme, and after being taken hostage and tortured must try to get away alive.

Review:

This was a decidedly average and unspectacular backwoods slasher effort. When this one works is due solely to the visual aesthetics in the first half that evoke a sense of menace about the situation. The atmosphere of the first half, with the crew going on their trip into the forest and the subsequent trip through the forest on foot, is quite fun generating an ominous air here with the oppressive woods and hint of danger that comes from staying at the sketchy store. Once they get captured and taken to the copmund, the torture here is pretty easy to identify but also helps to add to the barbaric cruelty with some intriguing scenes on display to showcase their savagery but also ingenuity to come up with the kind of bloodletting on display here. Combined with a solid pace that allows for a nice watchable pace throughout, there are some worthwhile features here.

That said, there are a few flaws featured here. One of the biggest factors featured here comes from the killers themselves who are so uninteresting they barely inspire any fear. There’s nothing remotely terrifying about either one, as the film mistakenly lets them talk and converse with each other or those around them early and frequently throughout the film, rendering them completely unlikely to be the silent, intimidating types. Since these aren’t threatening or intimidating and nothing they do is interesting enough here since it’s all the usual and expected tropes of backwoods psychos involving unwarranted sexual advances, a proclivity towards barbaric torture, and verbal taunts detailing twisting a perverse sense of manners towards their guests. As we’re never given anything about who they are or why they’re doing this, it’s quite unimpressive how this plays out.

That also leads to the other real issue here since everything here is so predictable and unoriginal nothing's really as shocking as it thinks it is. The concept of the two backwoods psychos keeping a clandestine operation running like they do here is nothing new, especially with the operation featuring a captive pregnant woman with their baby, a local secretly involved in their work, and the constant escape attempts failed mainly by their stupidity rather than anything the killers do. It’s all something that we’ve seen before. It doesn’t have anything rather unique about it involving the use of the psycho family living off into the wilderness which all makes for an unspectacular time overall, much like the unfortunate inability to feature any real gore. The off-camera wound-making yet on-camera aftermath is a repeated tactic here, especially with the low body count which all hold this one down into the mediocre range.

Overview: *.5/5

A decidedly average backwoods psycho family feature, this one is worthwhile enough for one real area while being let down by several big issues into being just a mediocre genre effort. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of the style or approach here while those looking for more than just a typical genre effort might want to heed caution with this one.