Butchered (2010 Video) User Reviews

Bloodless Slasher Tribute

[mattressman_pdl · 3/10 · 9 April 2011]

Available in the Midnight Horror Collection from Echo Bridge called Backwoods Butchers, Butchered was decent viewing.

Although obviously shot on an extremely low budget,there are a few decent moments to be found here. The opening scene, culminating in an homage (or steal) of a scene found in Exorcist III, built up fair tension and the montage/opening credits looked pretty professional. But the wooden acting from most of the young cast and the lack of originality in the killings brings the movie down big time in my opinion. Practically everyone was dispatched with an axe to the chest, it got repetitive.

I wanted to be kind to this independent horror film, but it just has too many faults. I do respect the fact that the makers are obviously inspired by stronger horror film, but it's a shame that this one didn't turn out too strong.

Mindless way to kill about an hour

[Nywildcat1 · 3/10 · 5 January 2012]

The tag-line says "It's in the vein of classic horror". I guess so, if you took all the great 80's slasher flicks and condensed them to an hour.

The premise is the usual, partying teens trapped on an island with an escaped serial killer, insert nude girl here and flying axe there and you've basically seen the movie.

It's unbelievably short, clocking in at about 1h18min. The entire movie could have been cut down to 45 minutes if you cut out the opening credits and scenes of them partying in slow motion. The movie was pretty much bloodless and unsuspenseful. If they took out the nudity and the profanity, it probably would have gotten a PG rating.

So, if you have about an hour to kill (no pun intended), go ahead and take a look. If anything to laugh at the cliché factor.

"Horror in the Vein of the Classics" . Hmm?

[Coventry · 4/10 · 23 July 2011]

The quote in the review's subject is the actual tagline for this 2010 straight-to-video horror quickie poetically entitled …"Butchered". Hmm, I guess someone confused classic horror with amateur nonsense. Yes I'm looking at you Mr. and Mrs. Writers/Co-directors! But then again, you honestly can't be too harsh in your criticism because basically they only had the modest ambition to make a very straightforward and rudimentary slasher picture to bring homage to all the trash released during the glorious 1980's. "Butchered" is a (barely) 70 minutes long series of ancient clichés, usual stereotypes and a whole lot of predictable situations. Somewhere in a quiet harbor town in North Carolina – of all places - there's a deranged axe-wielding serial killer on the lam. His name is Terence Skinner and he used to work in the butcher shop of his parents, but then went bonkers after his return from the Gulf war and massacred more than 40 people. Or at least that's what the journalist explains during the opening credits, which have some pretty cool musical guidance as well. In the nearby town, a handful of teenagers decide to spend one last weekend partying together before they head off for college. They go to a little island to camp and have random sex, but guess who they bump into there! All the potboiler elements that you except to see are well-presented: campfire stories, mobile phones without a signal, people stupidly splitting up to search missing friends and agonizing dialogs like "Oh my God, we're so going to die!!". "No, shut up, we're not going to die!". In good old 80's tradition, you can also immediately predict the order in which the teenagers are going to knocked off. Starting with the cute looking but redundant random girls, onwards to the sex-obsessed dumb friend and then quickly towards the loyal black guy and his girlfriend. The gore and the killings are disappointingly lame and monotonous. We're talking mainly about swinging and flying axes, but we aren't seeing the actual impact. Terence Skinner is a boring and unimaginative killer without any sort of charisma or "specialty". There's one sequence in which his silhouette stands motionless amidst the trees and covered in fog. I rather liked that sight because it promptly reminded me of "Madman" and that's a personal favorite (better call it "guilty pleasure") of mine. "Butchered" is available on a cheap disc together with three other masterpieces of amateur horror, so if you pick up a DVD like that at Walmart, you pretty much know what to expect.

Not worth your time

[lordplayboyman · 1/10 · 13 May 2011]

Being an Avid Fan of Horror movies, I had high hopes of this film - Sadly, those hopes were dashed. Quickly. I was expecting this horror/thriller film that was worthy of being a big part of my library, and now I know it will never be. I'm expecting a Horror Film that actually scares you. Instead, I got bad acting and a weak storyline. This is NOT what makes a great horror movie. Granted, Most horror movies do have cheesy dialog at times, but the good ones don't have the cheesy dialog all the way through. Another issue I have is with the horror scenes - There is nothing wrong with a little gore in some death scenes, let alone a special effect or two. *POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT* And I'm pretty sure there is a TON of voice-over work in the latter part of the film, more then usual. If there is only one thing to take from this movie, it's the fact that this movie serves as a baseline as to what you don't do when you are making a horror film. This movie is NOT worth the time.

HO-HUM ANOTHER SLASHER

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 11 December 2018]

The movie starts out cleverly. A mass killer, a butcher, named "Skinner" (get it!) is on the loose. A woman goes to her home, house #9 (turn me on dead man) and her door is unlocked. She hears a noise and checks it out....and she has accidentally shut the cat into a room, something I have done 1,000 times and a few TIMES by accident. Then before the credits are done she is strung up topless and bleeding.

Once the credits are over, so is the clever stuff. The acting goes down hill as a group of kids who seem at odds with each other half the time,head off to an island for the weekend. As they pull away from the shore and get about 10 feet out they lose the proverbial phone reception, although the one boy does have a radio so he can contact his brother in an emergency.

This is no house on the island as they camp out in two man/woman tents. In a serious breach of slasher etiquette the killer (D.J. Naylor) doesn't wait until nightfall until he selects his first victim. The slasher, like all good slashers can meander faster than any scared teen can sprint. The island killings, which should have been slow and deliberate with good spacing between them was not. He doesn't strip and torture his victims like he did during the opening credits. Instead they opted to fill their 90 minutes excessively building the character of Dylan and the issues with his family, which didn't play much into slasher aspect of the film.

Parental guide: sex, f-bombs, blood, gore, nudity

Not Much Butchery, TBH

[FilmFatale · 2/10 · 17 May 2021]

Seven high school friends want to spend one last weekend camping on an isolated island. Unfortunately for them, a serial killer escaped custody and ends up on the very same island! What are the odds? It's a simple premise in a great location but this movie manages to waste every opportunity it can. Seven people. Remote location. Stalk, slash, end. I can kind of see the subplot about Dylan not wanting to take over the family fishing business and instead attend Stanford to become a lawyer but there's too much discussion about it. And why are we asked to care about his older brother's marriage and future plans? There are nubile young people trapped on an island with an escaped maniac, and we're wasting time with bro in a bar. The pacing is also weird - although there's a nice kill early on, it takes forever for our teens to meet The Butcher and once they do, there's no real sense of danger or urgency.

Whatever. I could deal with these failures if there had been some good gore on display but that's a big disappointment too and it's unforgivable. Look, the movie is not only called Butchered, the escaped psycho is a butcher with the nickname "The Butcher" so sue me if I expected some actual butchery. Perhaps they should have called it "Hit Once with an Ax" - otherwise, this is just an egregious case of false advertising.

The Butcher only gets about half the job done.

[dbs630-697-952794 · 5/10 · 25 September 2011]

While most might argue that the Butcher was a terrible movie, I try to find the positive side of the light. While they weren't laying any new mile stones for the horror genre they did have a good back story to the main character. I liked the idea that he was a Desert Storm Vet who went nuts, but I would have liked it a lot more had they made him a little less "big and dumb." In the beginning we see a great montage of torture and gore, but when push comes to shove all he does is hack up the characters on the island. Why didn't he torture them? Why didn't he make things out of their bodies? Some butcher. There are a couple of nice nudity scenes in the film, hot chicks, okay dialogue, nice cinematography and editing. 71 minutes made it just barely a feature, why they couldn't have filmed another 20 minutes of footage is beyond me. It could have been a masterpiece of indie horror but they just didn't get all the way to the finish line.

Nifty slasher flick

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 7 July 2011]

A bunch of high school seniors go to a secluded island to party prior to heading off to college. The kids run afoul of a vicious axe-brandishing psycho Gulf War veteran known as the Butcher (an effectively menacing portrayal by hulking behemoth D.J. Naylor). Directors Charles Stweart, Jr., Sheila Brothers, and Shaun O'Rourke relate the familiar, but still engrossing story at a constant brisk pace, develop a good deal of tension, present characters who are both well drawn and sympathetic, deliver a fair amount of graphic gore, and sprinkle a decent dab of tasty gratuitous female nudity for good measure. The competent acting from the solid no-name cast rates as another big plus, with especially praiseworthy contributions by Tim Woodward, Jr. as the willful, conflicted Dylan, Melissa Lukon as the sweet Jenna, Kristina Sipes as the perky Hope, Shaun O'Rourke as Dylan's regretful older brother Brody, and Kit Johnson as hot brunette babe Chloe. Joseph Colyer's sharp cinematography gives this picture an impressive polished look. The lively and rattling score by Tommy Brothers and Jack Bowden Faulker hits the stirring'n'shivery spot. Moreover, the tight 71 minute running time ensures that this movie never becomes dull or overstays its welcome. A worthwhile little slice'n'dice opus.

Old school horror like they used to make!

[remo007 · 6/10 · 21 March 2010]

Butchered (2010) What we have here is an old school horror flick that could have been made after John Carpenter's Halloween put scarepics back in as Big Business again, but before Tom Savini brought on the graphic violence in Friday the 13th (1980). The story gets going with the convicted murderer called The Butcher escaping custody and picking up right where he left off. And by picking up, I mean as in sharp implements he puts to bloody use. In the meantime, while he's dodging the police and picking off a couple of victims, we meet our leads, seven high school students just graduated and about to go their separate ways. To celebrate their friendship they boat out to an island just offshore for a weekend of partying they hope will forever stay in their memories. Unfortunately for them, the Butcher just landed his stolen boat on the other side of the island, and when he gets through with them, there might just be nothing left of them but memories. All in all, this one shapes up as not bad. It's obvious this was a very low budget affair, but it moves along, clocking in at a spare 71 minutes. Probably the biggest problem I have with the film is not in its production, but in the marketing. Calling the film Butchered and touting it as unrated on the box sets up expectations that are not so much not carried through as I'm guessing not ever planned for. Quite simply, the direction, credited to Charles Stewart, Jr, co-writer/producer Sheila Brothers, and co-writer/producer/actor Shaun O'Rourke doesn't dwell on the kills. They are quick, snappy sequences more interested in eliciting a jump from the audience than a grab for the barf bag. There are some gruesome moments, but the movie doesn't shove them in your face and linger on the blood and guts, which is why it seems so much like a movie made 30 years ago. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Without going into spoilers, the body count is a respectable double digit number, and I'm not counting the victims the Butcher killed to get his nickname or the murdered police dog everyone seems to mention a lot. I think the film is unrated because it wasn't submitted to the ratings board, not because it is the ne plus ultra of extreme gore and sex. Speaking of sex, we do get a couple of nice nude scenes sprinkled in, always a plus in this kind of endeavor. I would call this a solid R based on the violence, nudity, and language. Breaking it down, the film looks very nice, with crisp cinematography and gorgeous seaside locations; the script is decent, with some funny lines, if no game changing twists or turns; the acting is okay, although sadly the better actors stay on shore instead of going to the island; and always important - the killer: The Butcher is a big brute of a guy, at his best in the night scenes, framed in fog with his big ol' axe; and losing some of his scary mojo in the last few scenes as we see him a bit too well. This isn't the best horror film you'll ever see, and I'd guarantee it isn't the worst one either. It's worth a look for those so inclined, so check it out! Starring Tim Woodward Jr, Melissa Lukon, Shaun O'Rourke, Cari Moskow, and DJ Naylor as The Butcher.

My Review Of "Butchered"

[ASouthernHorrorFan · 6/10 · 31 May 2014]

"Butchered" is a neatly packed, burst of low-budget slasher horror directed by Charles Stewart Jr. with co-directors Sheila Brothers and Shaun O'Rourke. Honestly I hope those are more honorary co-directing credits, because I don't see why a film that falls just over an hour really needs multiple directors, but whateve. That is no issue really. "Butchered"stars the standard cast of characters played by Timothy Woodward Jr., Nikki Beall, Cory Broadwater, Robert Covington, Kit Johnson, D.J. Naylor, Jaime Moffett, plus a few other actors in a story that follows a group of friends, who take off on vacay to a small secluded island, off the coast of the Carolinas.

The story is a nice, classic nightmare of slasher fanfare that places the young up against the force of a homicidal psycho, butcher. The set- up is thought out, leading us through a nice, "all fall down" scenario that, considering the budget and talent, manages to create an easy, story arc. The dialog is a bit underwhelming, and melodramatic, but it gets you there fundamentally. Personally I think the writing is too "over-thought" with the material seeming cliché and unauthentic. However this is only a slight hindrance and nothing that effects the ability to watch the film. Some characters are more driven to emote the stories intentions while a couple stagger through the lines and scenes systematically. Still this is a "slice-n-dice" flick so all they need to do is be there and die for the camera. This they definitely do.

The acting is the quality you would expect in a low-budget flick like this, like I stated before some actors give a better performance than others. The actual dialog and character development is sort of weak, often creating disconnected and unconvincing performances. Still there are moments when the acting and dramatic character interactions pick-up and deliver, giving us some suspense and enough connection to move the story along. The actual story is a pretty nice "birth of a slasher" narrative with recognizable 80 slasher influence.

As for the special effects and sound effects in "Butchered" I am split on both. The music and instrumental created the desired effect that Stewart was aiming for, my issue is I felt it was hokey, white-washed and too damn sugary. Plus the timing for these elements coming in to the scenes, guiding the feeling of the story, often seemed "over produced" and a bit too clichéd. It created an unintended cheese factor that came off more Disney than horror. The special effects on the other hand worked for most of the kill scenes, with nice camera angles, little editing tricks that leave the gore implied, like the vintage horror films used, give credibility to the scenes.

The blood and visceral elements are practical effects. They are limited with most deaths and brutality implied, but enough shows to create a nice effect. The killer is a menacing monster guy with the stoic brutality of any antagonist in slasher horror. I know it sounds like I didn't like the film but I did, actually. It isn't anything special but for a cut-down film that is only a few minutes over an hour, "Butchered" gives a comparable, quick, slasher nightmare.

Partying teens stuck on an East Coast barrier island with a mad butcher

[Wuchakk · 6/10 · 26 July 2017]

Released to video in 2010 and directed by Charles Stewart Jr., "Butchered" details events on the coast of North Carolina when a group of high school grads take one last camping trip to their favorite party island. Unfortunately, a mad butcher is on the loose.

While this is a micro-budget slasher flick with the typical problems therein (e.g. sound) it's competently made and delivers the goods for what it is. Some thought was actually put into the script as the likable main characters are effectively fleshed-out. The acting ain't bad either, at least for obscure no-names. There are a few fetching nubile females and you can't beat the North Carolina coastal cinematography. If you like the Friday the 13th flicks and can handle no-budget independent productions "Butchered" is worth checking out.

The film runs 71 minutes and was shot in Wilmington, North Carolina, and nearby Carolina Beach State Park. The script was written by Shaun O'Rourke, Sheila Brothers & Roxanne Marchand.

GRADE: B-