17 September 2016

CHAW. (2009) A KOREAN MONSTER MOVIE REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.



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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