DIRECTOR: TYLER CORNACK | SCREENPLAY: TYLER CORNACK, RYAN KOCH | STARRING: ANGELA JONES, TYLER RICE, TYLER CORNACK | RELEASE DATE: MAY 4TH
During a routine prostate exam, bored IT drone Chip (writer and director Tyler Cornack) discovers an unexpected kink that he never knew he had. Not that there’s anything wrong with shoving things up your butthole for kicks, but it kind of depends on what you’re forcing up there. When his wife refuses to play, Chip is forced to look elsewhere for stimulation.
Enter detective Russell Fox (Tyler Rice), who meets and befriends Chip at Alcoholics Anonymous. When Russell is called to investigate a missing child, he begins to suspect that there’s more to Chip’s addictions than meet the eye. You see where this is heading? Yeah, up Chip’s arse, along with the remote control, some missing children and a number of neighbourhood pets. And Russell is determined to get to the bottom of it.
Such body horror is rare outside of the extreme end of Japanese cinema, and so one must applaud the film’s co-writer, director and star for Butt Boy’s bravery. Cornack pulls a whole thriller from out of Chip’s bumhole – and a compelling one, at that. There’s a dry sense of humour to the writing, which otherwise plays the story straight – more film noir than exploitation horror. It looks and sounds great too; one of the sharpest, slickest low-budget genre movies in years. That dedication means the film’s one joke never gets old, and Butt Boy mostly sustains its conceit to the end. And what an end! This film does for sticking things up one’s jacksy what Psycho did for showers and dead mummies.
Like a surprisingly fun rectal exam, Butt Boy is an unexpected treat. Of wit and atmospherics, it has piles. From its bizarre conceit, it derives one of the oddest, most charming genre movies of the year. Not bad for a one-joke body horror flick about a serial killer stuffing live children up his ass.
