Tag Archives: Adrian Langley

Oh, Unholy, EVIL Night! Oh, “Silent Bite” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Santa Clauses vs Vampires in “Silent Bite” Now Available!

Four armed bank robbers hold up in a sleepy hotel on a snowy Christmas night as they hunker down and wait for their police-diverting and getaway driver to double back for them.  With the front deskman on the take, a quiet place to shelter, and no cops in sight, the eclectic bunch of thieves believe they’ve escaped scot-free from the long arm of the law with $1 million dollars in cash.  Unbeknownst to them, the desk clerk didn’t disclose the other guests staying at the hotel, a vampire mistress and her three daughters who have been hidden away waiting for the felons’ arrival to feed on their blood.  Refuge becomes an inescapable trap as the nearly unstoppable and ruthless force of beautiful, deadly women bear down on the scantily armed thieves whose automatic rifles are no match against the vampiric bloodsuckers.  With options limited, they rely on each other and a bitten young woman to survive the night.

Christmas time is upon us.  Joy to the world!  While cheerful idols of Saint Nick and Jesus Christ are erected for one of world’s holiest of days, while candy-canes, gumdrops, mistletoes, and wreath deck the brilliantly warm, primary-punchy colored lights, and while neatly wrapped presents present themselves under the garishly garnished evergreen tree with neat little tied ribbons and bows for all the good little boys and girls, the rest of us unsavory lot have blood red and scary monsters still on the brain.  This is where Christmas themed horror movies come in handy, a little blend of both worlds and holidays to sate our dueling desire to enjoy each holiday.  To begin this year off right, Taylor Martin’s 2024 vampire horror, Christmas comedy, “Silent Bite,” is the first genre-splitting seasonal movie to come across our desk!  Martin, actress of “Till Death Do We Rot” and “Anathema” turned director of short films, helms her first feature from a script by British writer-actor Simon Phillips, who is no stranger to the possible malevolence of a good Christmas horror film having penned and starred in a serial killer couple Mr. and Mrs. Clause “Once Upon A Time in Christmas” and it’s sequel “The Nights Before Christmas.”  Filmed at the Jolly Roger Inn & Resort hotel of Otter Lake, Ontario, Phillips produces the feature alongside Mem Ferda (“K-Shop,” “Bonehill Road”) and executive producers Ern Gerardo and Anubandh Lakhera under the Nox Luna Media Group, 9I Studios, EAG Enterprises, and Dystopian Films labels.

Not only does Phillips write and produce, he stars in the principal role of Father Christmas, the leader of the armed thieves who perhaps is the most even-keeled to bear the competency of a bad guy constitution.  The British national adds a morsel of mercenary radiancy to his role but can’t quite be all that he can be because Father Christmas is too busy babysitting a squabbling, bambino-acting crew too hopped up on booze, drugs, insults, and their social awkward hangups to level up to Father Christmas cool, calm, and collected.  The randomly selected pool of eclectic elves with codenames for hired robbery include the monolith muscle of the feral Snowman (Michael Swatton, “Snow and Blood”), the rootin-tootin’ hardnose Grinch (Nick Biskupek, “Until Death”), and the technological-savvy and brilliantly awkward Prancer (Luke Avoledo, feature film debut).  Phillips, Swatton, and Biskupek have collaborated in more recent projects, such as “What Lurks Beneath” and “The Mouse Trap,” with all three men also having a piece of the two Adrian Langley “Butchers” films pie in their own regard between original and sequel, evoking a comfortability in line and action delivery dynamic when they bicker amongst each other.  There’s a fifth member of the crew, Rudolph (Dan Molson, also from “Butchers Book Two:  Raghorn”), who is not directly described as the leader but led us to believe the decoy driver hand selected all members of Santa’s purloining party pitted against a stronger, deadlier, and more conniving coven of women vampires with Sayla de Goede (“The Nights Before Christmas”) playing the matriarch.  Goede really hams up the performance of a Victorian vampire who’s snobby and seducing by leaving threatening and opposing at the door.  Mother rears three women turned vampires turned daughters in Lucia (Louisa Capulet, “Butchers Book Three:  Bonesaw”), Selene (Sienne Star, “Fear Street:  Prom Queen”), and Victoria (Kelly Schwartz, “The Bermuda Triangle Project”) and, once again, are failed characters to bring the intensity required as hungry seductress for blood and sex, said as much in the exposition between Mother and daughters.  The caboose of the “Silent Bite” cast has Camille Blott and Paul Whitney (“Blood and Snow”) play the recent bitten, love interest of Prancer and a graceless Renfield-type hotel clerk, respectively.  

What started out as a high energy concept of a comic-book style opening credits, providing audience the background bank robbery and chase epilogue, quickly decelerates to brisk walk of more-or-less the two groups intermingling amongst themselves until what basically becomes the climax of the story.  For a tale that plot parallels the Robert Rodriguez-directed, Quentin Tarantino-penned “From Dusk till Dawn,” a severe lack of ceaseless combustible action gives way to just a bunch of roundabout buildup to avoid spending bank on blank cartridges, violent effects, and choreography.  Instead, the AR-15s and handguns are rarely fired, gory effects are reduced to CGI spurts and theatrical blood rivulets down the chin, and a bunch of exposition, which in all fairness is written well and has concentrations of amusing tongue-and-cheek wit.  Developing the characters to their full potential is wasted because conflict between mortal and immortal arrives too late into the story and all that rev-exciting, rock soundtrack-blasting title card illustration at the beginning pseudo-fed a spoonful of high-octane snake oil.  The overall aesthetic of the story indulges in the festivities of the yuletide season of snowy exteriors, garish garlands and other Christmastime decorations, and our five anti-heroes in Santa themed suits but the visual themes and motifs are limited to such and are interrupted by grinchier clunkers of the aforesaid blood spurts and UV light incineration visual effects.

Arriving on an AVC encoded, 1080p, single-layer BD25 on a bloodsucking sleigh is not Santa Clause but Santa Clause with fangs in Cleopatra Entertainment’s “Silent Bite.”  Presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, the wider lens isn’t put to good use for a story that’s mostly set inside the tight confines of a hotel interior.  Even the pool room, where an opportunity to expand across a full-length swimming deck, is an opportunity that’s missed.  There are some exterior scenes of the Jolly Roger Resort & Inn as well as Rudolph’s eluding of the law that take the wider aspect ratio for a ride but are limited to these peripheral portions.  What really stands out are the colorful Christmas motifs of brilliant red, greens, and blues amongst the scantily cladded seasonal décor and while those areas are limited, the palette is vibrant and saturated to create a warm and cozy atmosphere contrasted against the dark snow.  Details are generally pleasing albeit select scenes where speckling occurs, such as Snowman dunking himself underwater that loose quite a sum of the previously clean image.  Two English audio options are available, a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Stereo.  Once again, Cleopatra Entertainment, the movie entertainment subsidiary of Cleopatra Records, continues to restrain their releases from full fidelity potential with not only a lossy surround sound format but also, compositionally, with combined tracks that rise and dive in bitrate, suppressing the audio quite a bit and then, randomly at varying intervals, relieves the pressure to provide a full-bodied, atmospheric contingent of diegetic sounds.  The notifiable difference is staggering and greatly exampled by Simon Phillips voice that sounds anemically high at a lower decoding rate then, all of the sudden, booms with accented resonation and vitality in it’s true uncompressed state. The uncompressed audio layer may not be as expansive but contains no stark erroneousness.  English captions are optional.  A scene clip fluid Blu-ray menu, framed by that same dark red, jet-black delimitation has a special features section only to offer little of said special features with a theatrical trailer and pictorial slideshow.  The physical release has a nice and simplistic black and red illustrative cover that’s a tell-all of what to expect.  The Blu-ray Amaray that holds the disc pressed with the same front cover art has no other supplements.  The region free Blu-ray has a runtime of 90 minutes and is unrated.

Last Rites: “Silent Bite” may not be the main present in Santa’s sack of sordid slayers but it’s definitely a stocking stuffer worthy of kicking off the Christmas season.

Santa Clauses vs Vampires in “Silent Bite” Now Available!

EVIL Backwoods Cannibals Are Back for Seconds! “Butchers Book Two: Raghorn” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Ready to Eat? “Butchers Book Two: Raghorn” Available Here on DVD!

The abduction of a wealthy family’s daughter drives the four kidnappers onto the backroads of rural America toward their way to riches.  However, things turn south as their vehicle strikes a large raghorn, instantly dissolving their escape route and their previously teetering plan.  A festering betrayal and greed divide the group that leads them into the cannibalistic hands of the sadistic, backwoods inhabitant Clyde and his monstrous freak of a brother Crusher.  Always looking for a good piece of meat and with a brutal penchant for playing with his food, Clyde takes them hostage at gunpoint, ties them up, and has fun torturing and tenderizing his foraged prize before chopping them up to pieces on a bloody stump for stew makings.  Yet, the abducted woman refuses to be the victim and let terrible, awful atrocities happen to her, and not even let it happen to her kidnappers, by escaping her confines and managing to get ahold of a double barrel shotgun.  A standoff ensues but nothing gets in between Clyde and his food. 

“Butchers Book Two:  Raghorn” is director Adrian Langley’s 2024 standalone sequel to his lowkey breakout 2020 hit, the indie backwoods cannibal-survivor picture, “Butchers”.  The sequel doesn’t stray too far from the precursory film’s primary premise with a family of degenerate provincials with a taste for human flesh whisking away stranded travelers in some kind deranged version of roadside assistance.  Langley directs and writes the script for the film based off a story conceived by Langley and Kolin Casagrande, who previously collaborated with Langley as a producer on his 2010 crime thriller directed feature entitled “Donkey.”  More than a decade later, Casagrande and Langley are again making beautiful violence together with Blue Fox Entertainment’s James Huntsman (“Bunker”), a parent company of the film’s distributor, Red Hound Entertainment, and “Butcher’s” Doug Phillips as producers and another “Butcher” producer, Kevin Preece, as associate producer.

Aforementioned, “Butchers Book Two:  Reghorn” doesn’t subsequently follow the first feature and introduces new set of paltry protagonists versus a new set of insatiable and vile cannibals deep within the middle of the woods of Nowheresville, America.  The party forcibly partook in the cannibals’ cruelty isn’t necessarily all an innocent party as they’re mostly kidnappers looking to score big from their captive.  Dave Coleman (“Ghoul House”), Miguel Cortez, Sam Huntsman (“Bunker”), son of producer James Huntsman, and Hollie Kennedy portray the ensnared antiheros with the latter two being most of the focus amongst them, seeing that they are cousins that evoke more empathy than the less empathic former.  The wild car outside of that and who are not the viciously outweighing outliers is the girl in the trunk, who is actually a man named Corgand Svendsen.  The androgynous model from Canada hikes up a skirt and wears a tight top crop to become the damsel Ash but Ash is no damsel in distress.  The story shifts from Ash’s bagged head and wrists tied helplessness to become the infiltrating protagonist to take up Clyde and Crusher to do what’s right, even if that means saving the skin, literally, on a couple of her captors.  Svendsen gives a calm and subdued performance, especially as a hostage in the money scheme and in the bloody mitts of cannibals, but perhaps there’s more than what meets the eye for Ash.  Perhaps, Ash is a part of the kidnapping scheme in a theorized plot between Ash and Sam Huntsman character Josh who frequently tries to make Ash comfortable in the whole ordeal and Ash is just trying to salvage her investment, but the strength of that theory never fully materializes in Ash’s motivation to go against two ruthless killers rather than to flee free with her life.  Clyde and Crusher are the two mysteriously originated characters who live in the woods and eat people.  Their background is not specified or shared in any minute way but “What Lurks Beneath’s” Nick Biskupek plays a mean, man-eating son of a bitch in Clyde while Michael Swatton, who previously played one of the Watson brothers in original “Butchers,” compliments his “little” brother as a colossal, head-crushing freak of a nature left in the audience’s peripheral view.  The sequel’s casts ends with Mark Templin (“We Are the Missing”) as a moment of reprieve stopgap sheriff tracking down the vehicular accident victims who may not be victims after all.

Watching “Butchers Book Two:  Raghorn” is like watching in a déjà vu fog.  The similar premise to the 2020 film peruses familiar aisles of country-chic cannibals chopping careless characters who stumble into their killing grounds.  What the sequel drops is the perversive and family legacy angle, reducing the story to just two brothers living isolated on the outskirts and barbequing people as they happenstance wander by.  Langley also doesn’t up the graphic nature but sustains the same amount of gore and mordacious violence.  Even when cutting down the killer contingent down half its size, violence remains taut and palpable for shock effect as Langley does make the savagery purposeful rather than just gratuitous.  “Raghorn” is by no means a bigger, badder sequel, as most sequels tend to try and exceed expectations and outdo the first, i.e. more blood, bigger body count, detailed special effects, etc., but the indie roots that made the original film palpable are still firmly grounded with a, literally, grab-it-by-the-balls, suit yourself story without the poking and prodding influences of a rapacious producer or studio with flashing dollar signs in their eyes. 

Breaking Glass Pictures’ “Butchers Book Two:  Raghorn” would have been a perfect fit for the distributor’s short-lived extreme horror sublabel, Vicious Circle Films.  However, we’re still glad the sequel made the home video market under one of Philadelphia’s most prominent indie distributor labels with a DVD release.  The MPEG-2, single layered, DVD5 is presented in an upscaled 1080p with a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio.  While not receiving high-definition resolution, you’ll be fairly pleased with the quality of this release that retains some faithful reproductions in textural details, such as Clyde’s cutoff jean jacket and overall grimy attire that does highlight the jacket’s frayed ends and the outlined dirt patches or the engulfing variety of foliage that naturally exhibited innate green shades, but also the general appearance is soft in the more depth of details.  Langley, who wears multiple production hats between editing, directing, and writing, also is behind the cinematographer lens to create the space of depth and to be stylistic with a few pan and track occurrences.  The English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix is the only lossy option available that renders a traversable diffusion of sound throughout with balanced layers between dialogue, ambience, and soundtrack layers.  Clyde’s intelligent intelligibility under a twang tongue clearly finds the audio receptors with the remaining dialogue denoting clarity in the same fashion. English subtitles are available for optional use. While Breaking Glass Pictures’ releases do not have a wealth of bonus content, most have some content to peruse; however, this particular release is feature only. The region 1 playback DVD has a runtime of 89 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: From the book of Andrian Langley’s cannibal misfits, a second story lives and breathe in “Butchers Book Two: Raghorn,” a gruesome, miscreant fanned, survival of the hungriest for their cravings tale wrapped just a tad too lightly for proper consumption.

Ready to Eat? “Butchers Book Two: Raghorn” Available Here on DVD!

Entrenched EVIL Sprouts Roots of Hate! “Bunker” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Go into the “Bunker” and Never Come Out!  Now on DVD!

Trench warfare has already been damning for allied forces held in stalemate against the German’s only yards away in their trench.  When the commanding Lt. Turner discovers the German trench has been abandoned, he moves his ragtag team of British and American forces across a barbed wire and cadaver-laden no man’s land in to salvage victory for obtaining a German bunker without a firefight or loss of life.  What they discover is an externally barricaded bunker and inside the vacated stronghold is a barely-breathing German soldier nailed to a cross.  Incoming artillery causes a bunker cave-in, leaving two of the soldiers dead and the others trapped inside.  Slowly, something insidious and omnipresent inside the bunker builds measured madness inside them, turning one-by-one the seasoned and fresh off the boat soldiers to suspect each other’s loyalty, sanity, and hope for escape,  something that has been dwindling every minute with each stale breathe. 

War and horror are unequivocally synonymous.  The atrocities and death seen on the combat field can break a person’s psyche in a matter of an artillery shell explosion.  Trauma can quickly take over as the totalitarian regime and that carnage-induced shock can never be unseen ever.  The wide-speed obliteration of people and towns done in the second Great War, between the Nazi hate-war crimes and the collateral damage caused by Blitzes and tank fire, has been the foundational base for a number of appended horror films.  “Men Behind the Sun,” “Outpost,” “Shockwaves,” and even “Ilsa, “She Wolf of the SS” are just a select few of the many subset horror films to be inspired by World War II.  While the more contemporary “Overlord” joined the bandwagon of one of the world’s deadliest conflicts, overlooked is the first Great War as the backdrop for horror narratives.  When I jog my categorial knowledge and memory of WWI horror movies, only one comes to mind, the 2002 M.J. Bassett mud and rain-soaked supernatural thriller “Death Watch” with Andy Serkis and Jamie Bell.  Now, I know two with 2022’s “Bunker,” the debut feature length script written by Michael Huntsman and directed by Adrian Langley (“Butchers”).  The U.S. production is spearheaded by Crossroad Productions with Buffalo FilmWorks (“A Quiet Place: Part II”) footing the costs by executive producers Lisa Gutbertlet, Andy Donovan, Jennifer O’Neill, Kevin Callahan, George Pittas and Brett Forbes (“The Collector”) with Matt Corrado (“Half Sisters”), Patrick Rizzotti (“The Collector”), Greg Wichlacz, and Michael Huntsman’s father and Blue Fox Entertainment founder, James Huntsman (“The Night Eats the World”) producing.

“Bunker” follows a group of allied soldiers unwittingly stumbling upon a supernatural dugout left behind by the enemy.  The U.S. production is fitted with nearly an all-American, all-male cast with the majority playing British soldiers and while accents do justice stressing certain syllables and comes off pronouncedly brisk, the ears can detect subtleties that can make you question the actor’s national validity, such as with stage actor Patrick Moltane’s Lt. Turner.  A very proper English suited from his officer rank, but the act does come off over-the-top and colorful in Lt. Turner’s pithy and lively vocabulary.  “Bunker’s” principal focus is on Pvt. Segura, a Latino-American medic who has answered the call of duty and has served long in the conflict, trying to prove his worth as outsider in his own country.  “Eraser:  Reborn’s” Eddie Ramos helms the character’s drive as an upstanding member of his community and as a military soldier by doing his part, playing the overall even-keeled medic whose goal is to keep soldiers healthy and breathing in a time of war.  “Bunker’s” subtle racism isn’t teeming and poignantly powerful, but the small band are mostly and carefully passive aggressive against Segura, except for one other private fresh off the boat, Pvt. Baker (Julian Feder, “Escape the Field”).  Segura then becomes what he’s yearned for, to be a protector, something he can’t do with minds already set in their ways with the rest of the characters who are either indifferent to his presence or forthright in his face as the root of their problematic situation.  Quinn Moran, Adriano Gatto, Mike Mihm (“Unsane”), Sean Cullen (“Killer Rats”), Roger Clark, and Luke Baines as the crucified Kraut make up the remaining all-male cast.

The all-male cast is crucial to the “Bunker’s” undercurrent theme which isn’t a torrent of one-after-another hits on the surface level.  Under the context that soldiers universally believe in comradery, especially during wartime stuck in a trench when relying on the next man to watch your back, Pvt. Segura secretly yearns to belong, be one of the team, and blend into the uniforms of brown and tan, suited mostly for the typical late 1920s white male.  Through the early acts of passive aggressiveness, the commanding officer ordering him to behave when left unattended, scolded for another private’s inability to move quietly across no man’s land, and being a person of mistrust when trapped in the German dugout, Segura ultimately is perceived as the enemy when the ungodly presence causes hallucinations, fear, and self-inflicting injury.  The bunker represents a fermentation of hate and death, deep-rooted distrust through the depictures of white radicles connecting everything around them be shield by the dirt walls that forces ugliness to come to a head by way of messing with the mind.  Being semi-familiar with Adrian Langley’s previous horror “Butchers,” I expected brutality, bloodshed, and groundwork that slowly flourishes as the story progresses and Langley delivers on demand with a chillingly connotative race-horror in an oppressive and melancholy World War I background.  While some period and wartime elements and actualities may frazzle historical war buffs, “Bunker” has otherwise resounding production quality despite its low-fare budget, feeling very much like the horrors of trench warfare and then some.

Philadelphia based, independent film home video distributor Breaking Glass Pictures releases Adrian Langley’s “Bunker” onto DVD.  The MPEG-2 encoded DVD5 is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  Honestly, the compression works well here with the color reduction, a decrease in the hue saturation, leaving behind more neutral tan, browns, and greens, to flourish as an old timey picture that harmonizes with the classic resembling opening credits where the cast and crew are listed as whole.  Details are generally potent, reflecting delineating contours, coarse textures, and all the minor sweat, dirt, and blood strewn about the dugout from the Arri Alexa camera that captures confined spaces with vast depth.  The English language Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound is the sole audio option and is the really only option needed for a confined, atmospheric film like this that utilizes the back and side channels with crumbling dirt walls and muffled bombardments.  There’s a nice balance between the prominent dialogue and the ambient action with Andrew Morgan Smith’s punchy score that’s like a mix between Joseph LoDuca’s “Army of Darkness” and Alan Silvestri’s “The Predator,” intense, grand, and heart pounding like a classic monster movie soundtrack. There are no subtitles available on this release.  Bonus features only include “Bunker’s” trailer and other Blue Fox Entertainment previews, another World War thriller “Wolves at War,” and Langley’s “Butchers.”  Physical attributes include a tempered chocolate-appearing DVD case with a long ally solder entering a large and foreboding bunker with war and graveyard elements above ground.  Inside, there disc art is pressed with the same image but cropped to just show the soldier entering the bunker.  There is no insert included.  The region 1 locked playback DVD comes not rate and has a runtime of 108 minutes.  “Bunker” is slowly-seeping dread of psychotronic apathy and abiding odium that manifests creaturely out of war’s massive and overwhelming stress and death.

Go into the “Bunker” and Never Come Out!  Now on DVD!

Nab’em, Chop’em, and Feed’em to the EVIL Ox! “Butchers” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

After the death of their firm handed, elderly mother, brothers Owen and Oswald Watson remain isolated in the boondocks, off the beaten path to nowhere, to live in their rundown family home, like the generations before them, to do the one thing they desire and born to do – abduct stranded motorists, kill the men, and imprison away the women for their sadistic and misogynistic pleasures.  After breaking down passing through on a rural bypass, four young friends find themselves fighting for their very lives against a pair of siblings with a deep rooted heritage of experienced violence to show for it, but when one of the brothers starts to become even more unhinged than normal, the remaining survivors seek to take advantage of the situation to escape, but their captors know the woods inside and out.

Everyone believes Canadians are overly nice and well-mannered.  Our considerate neighbors of the North withstand the plethora of static noise from the turbulent South, willing to forget and forgive in a moments notice with nothing more than a smile and slap across the back, but has anyone ever bare witness to Adrian Langley’s dog-gonna-hunt, exploitation film, “Butchers,” hailing from Ottawa, Ontario?  The 2020 survival horror thriller displays the unseen dark side of Canadian’s grinning and friendly façade and, boy, does it familiarize and rival some of the similar backwoods doggedness we’ve seen in the last quarter century.  The film is written and directed by Langley and co-written with Daniel Weissenberger (“Come True”) in the intent of being a gritty, hillbilly-gone-wild hoedown with butcher blade sharpness.  Langley’s cinematic shiplap usually provides hard to swallow and violent themed content set to put one on tenterhooks established from his string of unflinching crime dramas (“A Violent State,” “Crook”) when the director is not moonlighting as a made-for-television PG-rated filmmaker for the holidays (“Candy Cane Christmas,” “Homemade Christmas”).  Christmas is long gone and a long way off and no amount of jovial spirit can guarantee a happy ending in “Butchers,” a production of Langley’s Unit XIX Films and Nicolás Onetti, producer and filmmaker behind retro-manufactured giallo horror “Abrakadabra” and “Francesca,” attached under his production banner, Black Mandala.” 

Principal characters are essentially the entire cast, small in size but pack a punch with their performances.  Starting off with the brothers, Owen and Oswald Watson, whose story begins during the snow and icy-filled heart of the winter months with them standing graveside, freshly filled with the remains of their mother, well before the hapless four protagonists breakdown in the summer’s heat.  The Watson boys story arc from second fiddle to top brass in a brief moment of background with the death of their mother as they quickly set to work pouncing on a young couple and exploiting the chained up and captive wife/girlfriend for carnal pleasure while abiding by a certain set of harshly punishable rules.  Television’s “Age of the Living Dead’s” Simon Phillips and Michael Swatton reteam in their respective roles of Owen and Oswald who are very much human characters with carefully planned and executed uncontrollable urges, callous whims, and fallible actions, sullied by a mixture of mental disease and rotten nurturing.  Philips is terrifying as in the intellectual brother, with his sophisticated word hole, very willing to get his hands dirty as the more perverse of the two brothers, but his relationship is on the rocks with his unstable brother, Oswald, as Swatton channels the internal family quibbling mindset of Leatherface from the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” franchise with the exception of the crossdressing obsession and the iconic, rip-roaring chainsaw.  Oswald instead wields a custom butcher’s knife with jagged shark life teeth as he manically runs through the forest hunting down the four youngsters played by Julie Mainville (“Ghastlies”), James Gerald Hicks (“Killer Mom”), and “The Nights Before Christmas’s Anne-Carolyne Binette and Frederik Storm.  With these lambs for the slaughter characters, this is where Adrian Langley succumbs to tropes that instill a misplaced sense of courage, uncontrollable and shallow horniness, and a turmoil amongst friends to be the divisive factor leading of their fate.  “Butchers” rounds out the cast with Jonathan Largy, Samantha De Benedet, Blake Canning, and Nick Allan as uncle Willard. 

“Butchers” does have blatant derivative bones underneath a body that echoes the frameworks of pioneered films from the aforementioned “Texas Chains Massacre” to more recently “Wrong Turn,” the original film series formed in 2003 about inbred, cannibalistic mountain people.  These powerhouse of unpretentious and bloodthirsty franchises inspired much of what you’ll experience in Langley’s homage of a cyclical subgenre; yet, the filmmaker’s tale of two brothers with a bloodletting scheme of their own doesn’t lend itself as being a hack work nor does the story render like an atrocious carbon copy but, rather, “Butchers” lives in a moment of simple, matter of fact craziness living in the dark corners of the seemingly innocuous world.  Owen paints a near perfect picture of the one in a million chance that people, like his hapless captives, fall into the position they’re in, sophisticatedly monologuing with intent to his bound prey in a pair of scenes that slice a thinly opened gap of possibility and that, right there, is scary.  “Butchers” builds no momentum, but, instead, goes right for the throat straight from the get-go as Langley reinforces the attitude that this can happen to anyone by not getting too familiar with characters in their backstories.  In order to establish a pattern of action and to lay foundations in who we should and shouldn’t root for when things go to hell, virtue-less unfaithfulness becomes a promising wedge that doesn’t necessarily cause descension in the ranks of survival, but paves a trope-laden path of who will ultimately perish.

Backcountry exploitation might have seem to have run it’s course. I mean, really, how many times can crazy deformed cannibals wreak gut-spilling havoc on the naïve outlanders to their idyllic provinces? For me, as many time as it damn well pleases, especially when fundamentally satisfying as Adrian Langley’s “Butchers,” distributed by Breaking Glass Pictures and now available streaming on Prime Video. “Butchers” will be available on DVD at a to be announced date. Langley, wearing multiple of hats in the spirit of indie productions, dons the director of photography bowler hat…well, I don’t really know what hat the DOP would wear, but we’ll represent the position with a bowler for now due to the deluxe sophistication the bowler implies while still sustaining a classic touch and that’s how I see Langley’s clean and competent cinematography style whose able to frame scenes that force audiences to be a part of the action . As soon as a character turns to speak to another character or when a car hood slams, an effective rush of adrenaline courses through the veins when out of nowhere one of the brothers pop onto the widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio presented screen. “Butchers” come with no bonus material after a 92 minute runtime, but a single scene lingers during the credits that, again, harps back to a certain dancing killing machine from the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” May not be an original concept, but “Butchers” can still castrate the soul with an exploitatively merciless family tree sowed with perversion and bloodlust.

Rent or Own “Butchers” on Amazon Prime Video! Click the Poster to Watch!