The Butcher

Emerging South Korean filmmaker Kim Jin-Won takes a cue from the "torture porn" horror sub-genre propagated by such controversial shockers as Hostel and Saw for this first-person frightener centering on a group of sadistic snuff film producers and the unwilling stars of their most recent production. The action begins as a handful of people awake bound and bloodied on the floor of a dilapidated slaughterhouse, their captors casually discussing the bloody mayhem that is about to unfold. It seems that overseas audiences are hungering for films that feature Koreans killing one another in a variety of inventive ways, and these producers are prepared to make a killing by catering to the growing demand for senseless violence. Each of the "actors" has been outfitted with a head-mounted video camera, their terror conveyed in immediate and unequivocal terms as they struggle to find an escape from the horrors of this dark abattoir. As the terror intensifies, the viewer experiences the scene from both the head-mounted cameras that have been placed on the actors, and the filmmaker's cameras as well. Later, a married couple is dragged mercilessly into the Butcher's blood-soaked chamber and the husband is forced to partake in a dehumanizing game of death that pits his love for his spouse directly against his survival instincts.