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Powerful

Don't Believe the Hype

The first must-see film of the year.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Transplanted to a remote village station, a police officer sent to investigate a series of strange animal attacks finds the area is part of the hunting grounds belonging to a vicious, man-eating boar and must team up with a group of eccentric locals to stop its bloodthirsty rampage.Frankly, this was quite an uneven creature feature. When this one works, a lot of its positives come from the exceptionally enjoyable creature feature setups. There is a lot of great action within here, from the first attacks in the outskirts of the village where the victims are killed off in savage attacks to the first real appearance of the creature when it strikes the fruit-field and drags a victim away. That this leads into the stellar hunting scene in the wilderness followed by the utterly phenomenal massacre at the festival to celebrate the capture which is one of the finest parts of the film being filled with some absolutely stellar action. The wild and frenzied finale, going from a series of encounters in the forest to the final confrontation in the factory is a great finish and offers even more fun to like about it. Coupled with the great gore from its vicious kills, some decent comedy and practical pig-effects, these hold it up over it's few minor flaws. Among it's most egregious faults is the fact that this one really goes for an uneven tone that's somewhat distracting overall here. The influx of comedy at times works nicely, yet there are numerous times where comes off as distracting more than anything, especially with gags like the repeatedly falling down a hill, stumbling across loose body parts in the woods or encountering ravening drunks in the middle of the village which are just part of the comedic touches featured in here. These are bland, boring gags that just eat up time here to make this one seem far longer than it really needs to be, as this tone clashes wildly with the more serious creature feature action presented here. Likewise, the film just in general is far too long and doesn't really need to be as lengthy as it is since these are just unneeded and don't add much to the film. Not only is the comedy aspect of the film way too engaged but there are way too many sideplots about the people of the village that have little reason for being included, ranging from the treatment of the mother he has to take care of to the rather eccentric characters living in the village that are shown engaging in rather full detail of their lives while living in the village and all the time spent on rehearsing for the video they film out in the wild are just pointless filler that drags away from it's best feature, the giant man-eating pig running around so it's far longer than it really needs to be. These here are what really hold this one down.Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

I love a bit of word play, especially homophones, and really wanted to write something about how this film was a crushing bore (boar=bore...geddit?); unfortunately, I didn't find it boring per se, just extremely irritating, being full of unlikeable characters and zany (ie. crap) humour, and rarely delivering on its promise of gruelling, gory pig-based horror (don't even get me started on the design and CGI of the pig itself). Never mind, I have a back-up pun prepared for such an emergency: the film is a chore! (Chaw=chore...God, I'm good!).Yup, it's hard work getting to the good bits in this giant killer pig movie from Korea. The insufferable comedy is easily the film's most annoying aspect, with the unnecessary character development coming a close second (all the more grating since everyone is so unappealing); at over two hours long, it all starts to get rather annoying. Eventually, my patience was rewarded with a fun chase scene and well executed final showdown, the massive porker pursuing the hero and heroine to a disused factory, but boy was it a struggle to get there.

Chawz is another entry in the horror/comedy genre, this one coming from South Korea. Not as good as The Host, also from South Korea, a couple of years ago, but there is still some enjoyment to be had. The plot moves along a little too slowly for this type of film and has more than one similarity with the plot of the original Jaws. The comedy plays more to the slapstick side, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your taste in comedy. I personally found a few gags that made me smile, but nothing that made me laugh. The actors do a convincing job with their characters, but no one will blow you away or steal the show. The visual effects are good, using a mix of practical and computer generated, but not up to the normal standard of major North American films. If you have seen other movies of this type from this part of the world, the effects are on par. If you're expecting something along the lines of Slither or Army of Darkness, you most likely will be disappointed or even bored with this. But if you have seen The Host or Tokyo Zombie, this film is similar in tone and pacing and while never reaching the quality of The Host or the comedic absurdity of Tokyo Zombie, Chawz is an enjoyable monster movie. Flawed, but enjoyable.

Okay so the plot is basically about a huge over-sized boar that is terrorizing and killing the people in the country size, and it has some Korean humor thrown in as well. This is one of those movies that should not be taken seriously and just accept the things that happen in order to enjoy it, the characters in this also act very awkward in certain situations that adds to the humor. As monster movies go this isn't a great movie, but the characters are developed for the most part with there own motives and the slapstick humor actually worked well in this. The special effects are not that good but passable for a B-movie. The character interaction and having more to do with the community than the actual monster itself was a nice change of pace, because for this movie it works without showing too much monster action. Sure there are plenty of better monster movies out there, but this is still worth a look.6/10