CHAW. (2009) A KOREAN MONSTER MOVIE. DIRECTED BY SHIN JUNG-WON. MUSIC BY KIM JUNG-SEONG. CINEMATOGRAPHY BY KIM JUNG-CHUL.
STARRING UHM TAE-WOONG, JANG
HANG-SUNG AND JOON JE-MOON.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This Korean comedy horror is a great
laugh and well worth your time. It's the story of a small mountain
village that's being terrorised by an unknown predator, a predator
who tears its victims to shreds and scatters their remains all over
the countryside.
When the predator turns out to be a
giant mutated wild boar, a motley crew of five people set off up the
mountains to try and kill the monstrous man-eating beast. There's a sort of
celebrity hunter-type who's been on TV hunting and killing things and
who's also great craic as a
character.
There's his
old mentor also, an elderly local man whose pretty young
grand-daughter was the first victim of the enormous boar. There's a
kleptomaniac detective who likes to swipe small food items whenever
an opportunity presents itself. Sounds all good so far...!
We've also got a keen-as-mustard lady biologist who can't wait to get up close and personal with
the boar, and a cute cop who's just been moved to this little backwoods country
town from the city because he was thoughtless enough to write
'anywhere' on his
transfer application. His preggers wife thinks he's a right dope for so
doing and his senile old mum has gone missing in the woods. The woods
where the boar's at large...
The
film-makers have obviously watched and loved many B-movies,
creature-features and monster movies in the past, and they pay an
affectionate homage to some of them in this film. JAWS,
JURASSIC PARK, KING KONG and
GODZILLA come
immediately to mind, but especially JAWS, the
mammy and daddy of all monster movies.
There's
an hilarious scene in CHAW where
the townspeople have caught a boar, but the elderly man whose
grand-daughter was killed totally harshes their buzz by telling them
that it's not the boar.
As a matter of fact, they've caught the boar's smaller missus. Daddy
Boar is still out there. Just like in JAWS.
In a
scene straight out of JAWS, the
old man tells the townspeople to cut down the boar they've strung up
for public approbration and bring it somewhere else so that he can perform an
autopsy on it: 'Everything it's eaten in the last three
days will still be in there.'
Cue a boar
autopsy with the cops puking and swooning in the background at the
stench and the old man calmly playing Hooper, the guy from the
Oceanographic Institute who cuts open the belly of the beast and
chucks out everything from out-of-state licence plates to last
night's dinner.
JURASSIC PARK is
referenced in the scene where the drinks in the town hall (or
small shed, which is what it is really!)
start to wobble due to
the proximity of the boar and there's a sad GODZILLA-style
scene at the end of the film
which I can't tell you about because it'd be a spoiler.
I mean
the big Hollywood blockbuster version of GODZILLA, by
the way, the one with Matthew Broderick in it and also Hank Azaria
and Harry Shearer from THE SIMPSONS. That
was such a brilliant film to watch on the big screen. Remember when
they broadcast live from
Madison Square Gardens? It's a shame that we can't watch all
monster movies on the big
screen, the way they're meant to be watched.
The
baby pigs in CHAW are
adorable. The Piggy-In-The-Backpack is just too cute and I love the
way his eyes narrow at the end to show that he's evil and has every
intention of carrying on his dad's work.
The scene where the cop's
wife has just given birth and Daddy sees his kiddy for the first time
is pretty funny too, as is the one where the crazy 'Call me
Mummy' lady finds her ideal
companion in Celebrity Hunter-Type Dude. Whether he likes it or
not...
My
friend and I laughed ourselves hoarse at the bit where the new cop
meets his new boss
outside
his new home. The boss, mistaking the younger man's crazy old mum
dancing in the garden for his wife, says:'Your wife is a
real beauty...!' while the
bewildered younger man just stares open-mouthed at him. Yeah,
yeah, I know it's the kind of thing where you had to be there to get
how funny it is but trust me, it's funny when you see it...!
At just
under two hours, this film is twenty or even thirty minutes too long.
It certainly could have had some time shaved off it to make it
tighter, but otherwise it's an excellent comedy horror and the big
boar is fantastic. It cost a packet to make the film but it was
pretty successful in its turn at the box-office. It's a good laugh
and you'll enjoy it. It certainly won't 'boar' you,
anyway...
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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