Butcher House (2006) (V)

User Rating:

3.7/10   

Director:

Christopher Hutson

Writers:

Christopher Hutson (co-writer)
William Langlois (co-writer)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

Butcher House, Still Killing

Plot:

In the 1960's at Arthur Kingston's old butcher house blood and guts were routine. That all changed one night when the blood spilled was human...

Plot Keywords:

Butcher | Blood | Death | Murder | Teen

Cast

Laila Dagher	...	Annie
Cooney Horvath	...	Tyler Williams
Erin Fleming	...	Jamie
Erin Cowden	...	Karla
Peter Berube	...	Blake
Jay Costelo	...	Josh
Sherwood Scott	...	Butcher
Sean Galuszka	...	James Kingston
Kimberly Rowe	...	Terry Kingston
James C. Burns	...	Stan Williams
Kimberly Parmon	...	Melissa
Ian Anderson	...	Worker Two
Sean Abley	...	Worker Three
Maggie Colburn	...	Young Couple Girl
Scott Barker	...	Young Couple Boy

Runtime:

USA:85 min | USA:90 min | USA:89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital | Stereo

Certification:

USA:Not Rated

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

FatKid Films

Trivia:

Filmed in an actual old butcher house in downtown Los Angeles.

Soundtrack:

Real Good Time on a Killing Spree

a slightly bloody diversion

This is a low-budget, shot on video film about a group of teens who are sent into an abandoned, cursed meat-packing plant to take an inventory of its contents. The teens reawaken an Aztec-demon-possessed butcher who killed his coworkers 40 years ago (oops!) and are possessed and murdered one by one.

The good: nice location, reasonably well-lit, though more variation in the large empty rooms would have added to the film. For the most part the actors (especially the main teen in charge of the inventory) do a good job.

The bad: hammy butcher villain isn't scary, Aztec curse "rules" never really explained, little plot problems (characters screaming at one end of a basement aren't heard by other characters a few hallways/rooms away?), awkwardly handled nudity.

You've got a ghost/demon that only appears to people who are just about to be killed, yet the film never really does anything special with that. The characters always wait/watch him close in on them and kill them, instead of, say, telling their friends where he's at in the room so they can help fight him off. Some scenes of the butcher menacing a teen (especially the final showdown) are ANNOYINGLY edited with lots of cuts. Eventually the scenes become boring.

After watching the movie I was left with the feeling that it could have been so much more.