By BILL REICK
Starring Michael Fischer, Paige Steakley and Johnny Huang
Directed by William Instone and Matt Rifley
Written by William Instone and Renfield Rasputin
Breaking Glass Pictures
“We just need to shoot this thing and get our easy ‘A.’ We shouldn’t think too much about it.”
– the character Derick (Johnny Huang) from BUTCHERS BLUFF, but also, presumably, the filmmakers…
As horror fans, we’re often asked to overlook quite a lot. Maybe we’re meant to look past budgetary constraints. Or sometimes, we have to ignore wooden acting. Even genre classics occasionally have plot points that just don’t hold up under scrutiny. Whenever we make these sacrifices, though, it’s because we expect the horror gods to reward us with something spectacular. Perhaps we’ll be gifted some graphic kills or an incredible twist ending, making it all worthwhile. When we’re asked to disregard certain aspects of a horror flick, we hope it’s because we’ll get something out of it.
BUTCHERS BLUFF asks a lot of us as an audience. We’re tasked with following an unmemorable, unlikable cast through nonsensical setups for subpar kills. The tradeoff is, “C’mon, you love this stuff! This is your thing, remember?”
The team behind this movie positioned it as a throwback to slashers of the 1980s. While BUTCHERS BLUFF competently achieves a few different goals, emulating an ‘80s slasher is not one of them. There is no throwback charm. There are no quirky, memorable characters. BUTCHERS BLUFF fails at evoking any sense of nostalgia whatsoever. The filmmakers misunderstand what people loved about the era, borrowing all the wrong signifiers from an unremembered decade.
Having a character say “r*tard” doesn’t call to mind some golden age for me, anyway.
Instead, this is a movie that more closely resembles the slashers of the ‘00s, with a torture porn influence and needless cruelty. In this, BUTCHERS BLUFF is a little more successful! It’s not too far off from a Wrong Turn-type flick.
Remember the opening portion of The Blair Witch Project, when our cast mills about, interviewing locals and collecting accounts about the urban legend? BUTCHERS BLUFF is that – but only that. There is no payoff. There are kills sprinkled throughout that have nothing to do with the main characters. It’s as if a studio said to the filmmakers, “Hey, there’s not enough action during this stretch of the movie, so in reshoots, go in and do a kill.” Unfortunately for viewers, these afterthoughts do little but bloat an already too-long runtime.
However, there is enough in BUTCHERS BLUFF for an exciting short film around its central killer, The Hogman. Wearing a pig mask that will make any Saw fan groan, The Hogman could have been a cool killer. A flashback sequence delivers a good-enough origin story. When the mask ages up with the man beneath it, getting stitched back together offscreen as it rots away, we get a design that could’ve been noteworthy if it had been handled better. Unfortunately, we don’t really spend enough time with The Hogman to identify anything memorable about him as a character. This is just another guy in another mask. If that’s your thing, then maybe you’ll like it.
The killer isn’t the only decent part of the movie, though. Paul T. Taylor is here. His performance is much better than everything else going on. He has a confidence and professionalism that are lacking in the rest of the movie. You might remember Taylor as Pinhead in that one Hellraiser movie that Doug Bradley wasn’t in (not worth even the cursory glance at Google that would reveal its name; it’s not the Hulu one, though).
Taylor plays a sheriff who doesn’t need to be in the movie at all. Better storytellers would’ve set his character up as more of a red herring. Instead, we’re served a last-minute excuse about the killer saving his life. It would be a spoiler if the revelation were consequential in any way.
That’s the movie’s biggest sin. It doesn’t really need to exist. It’s the rare slasher that has nothing to say and is absolutely not fun at all. In attempting to recapture the ‘80s, the filmmakers fumble the ball. Gone are the strong final-girl archetypes, traded in for ugly misogyny. The women in this movie are given very little to do and are seemingly in the story merely to have breasts. The men don’t even give us that.
Maybe having no personality isn’t such a crime. If you’re looking for a (sub)standard slasher with no surprises, you might enjoy BUTCHERS BLUFF. It hits lots of the familiar beats of the slasher formula, but even in that, it takes too long to do it.
Movies are hard to make. Good movies are nearly impossible. The problem with BUTCHERS BLUFF is that it’s content to not even try. It doesn’t want to be a good movie. It just wants to be “a slasher.” It contributes nothing to that style and misses what people love about the subgenre. A Chumbawumba reference saves it from being completely unfunny for its entire runtime, but filmmakers somehow failed at making me laugh during a scene where a character … ahem … “finishes early” in his trousers. The Farelly Brothers they are not.
There’s no tension. None of the kills stay with you. You won’t remember the characters’ names. But if you’re interested in a movie where a guy in a pig mask gouges a topless woman’s eyes out, then by all means, check out BUTCHERS BLUFF.
BUTCHERS BLUFF from Breaking Glass Pictures is now available on most streaming platforms.
