Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Stop me if you've already heard this one before: Six extremely annoying and unappealing college kids -- sassy blonde Rachel (Catherine Wreford), obnoxious, insensitive, and spineless musclehead Mark (a supremely terrible and insufferable performance by Alan Ritchson), sexy libidinous lesbians Atlanta (cute blonde Ashley Hawkins) and Liz (foxy brunette Tiffany Kristensen, who at least bares her breasts prior to getting bumped off first), bumbling nice guy Adam (decently played by Tom Nagel), and token black Sophie (Myiea Coy) -- on a cross country road trip run afoul of a vicious family of deadly and demented hicks after they get a flat tire in the middle of some nowheresville sticks. Gee, isn't that a remarkably fresh and inspired premise for a fright flick? Of course not, man! Director Edward Gorsuch, working from a pitifully trite and by-the-numbers cookie cutter script by Michael Hurst, manages to maintain a fairly brisk pace and delivers a handy helping of nasty gore, but crucially fails to create any suspense or spooky atmosphere. Worse yet, the main protagonists are so uniformly cardboard, irritating, and underdeveloped that one simply doesn't care whether they live or die. April Lang as deranged hag Ms. Mayhew, Bill Jacobson as hulking disfigured brute Franklyn Mayhew, and Annie MacKay as tongueless daughter Angel are reasonably creepy, but they still aren't anywhere near as scary and disturbing as the cannibal clan in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (a horror classic that this crud shamelessly copies to the grating ninth degree). Dennis Smith's generic shivery'n'shuddery score, the headache-inducing blaring alternative soundtrack, the variable acting from an attractive, but charmless and unlikable cast, and one of those always unwelcome groan-worthy "it ain't over yet!" (non)endings all add further abject insult to already appalling injury. Hank Baumert, Jr.'s slick cinematography makes this schlock look much better than it deserves. A real dud.

"The Butcher" is a clichéd and stupid, though entertaining slasher.**SPOILERS**Driving to Las Vegas, friends Mark, (Alan Ritchson) Adam, (Tom Nagel) Sophie, (Myiea Coy) Atlanta, (Ashley Rebecca Hawkins) Liz, (Tiffany Christenson) and Rachel, (Catherine Wreford) to celebrate their upcoming graduation. Taking a detour, they become stuck in the wilderness and become stranded. Trying to get out, they happen upon a strange farmhouse out in the woods. Taking it upon themselves to investigate as no one seems to be home, but find no one as well. While they don't find anyone inside, what they do find is enough to spook them and force them to rethink their escape. When the owner shows up, who's a deranged serial killer, and begins to kill them off one-by-one, they try to use their instincts to survive. When it becomes even more apparent that there's more than one killer, they fight harder than before to escape.The Good News: This wasn't as bad as it could've been. This one manages one crucial trick that so many fail, which is to stay watchable when it suddenly veers off into familiarity. This type of scenario has played itself out pretty frequently, yet this one still keeps itself fun and enjoyable. The killer is introduced relatively early, and this means that most of the film is about thinning the cast off, and that leads to numerous scenes where the killer is stalking the group. When one character is trapped in the barn underneath the table where the killer is operating on a victim is particularly intense, and an earlier scene where one victim is trapped inside a car during an assault is it's finest moment. That it soon proceeds into a thrilling chase through the woods is a mere bonus. One other big suspense scene is the attack on the victims inside the walls of the house, as the pickax blasting holes to get at them comes close to nearly hitting them on several occasions and the flight to get out is pretty thrilling. The high body count is also a plus, as there's a tree brunch cutting a victim in half at the waist while they're trapped in a car, a pickax to the head, needles stabbed in the neck, a really gory shotgun blast to the stomach, a hanging on a barbed wire noose and a pitchfork through the stomach only for further killing to be done with a chainsaw, among others that aren't that particularly original. Still, that death is one of the finest in the film, as he repeatedly screams to not kill them even after they've already been impaled to a door. Still, they keep begging and the Butcher feels the need to go get a chainsaw to finish the job. A simply great kill and a solid favorite moment. Another choice moment comes when one lesbian refuses to leave behind her lover's severed torso and drags the upper half into the car to console it. That's the sort of committed relationship that isn't normally seen in a horror film and gives it a little extra that might not normally appear. With an ending twist that is quite thrilling and really sells the film, this one does have some good parts to it.The Bad News: This wasn't as bad as it could've been, but there were still problems. The biggest one is that the film is way to familiar. This type of film has been done numerous times before, and there are way too many spots where the viewer can spot where the scene was lifted from. There are two big ones that can spotted simply from the plot description, but there's at least four or five others that are cribbed pretty regularly. The last half is really one whole movie shoe-horned into the others, and it sticks out by following certain scenes really shot-for-shot. It's pretty distracting. Despite the sheer familiarity, there's rarely been a film that displays this much idiocy in one movie. Every stupid thing they could rally together, they do. They flash and taunt the serial killer. They drive around with people stuck out of sun-roofs. They get blind drunk immediately after the first person gets killed. Then, at the moment when they enter the barn, the biggest insult to our intelligence comes into play so far when one of them says that this kind of thing always happens inside the creepy farmhouse in horror movies. Not only does the movie know that it makes use of every threadbare cliché the genre has to offer, it also has the gigantic brass ones to tell us about them. There's no sense of it being an ironic comment on the situation, it is blindly stated for all to hear, and that is the big mistake. We know it's going to happen, but they don't and to make a comment like that simply shows what this is going to be. The killer is also physically revealed too early and could've benefited from a later reveal, but these are the main problems.The Final Verdict: While it may seem to be simply a knock-off other, more well-known films, this was still a pretty fun time that does manage to entertain. Though that rip-off feel might be enough for most to dismiss this, those that do decide will find much to like. It's simply a matter of whether or not a film being incredibly familiar is enough to warrant a viewing.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity

A bunch of REAL annoying college students are driving to Las Vegas. Their car breaks down on a deserted road and they search for help. They find a big old ranch house, in the middle of nowhere, with a VERY strange family who love killing...Sound familiar? Absolutely pointless rehash of "Texas..." minus the story, characterization and scares. This also has the gratuitous female nudity and the now requisite lesbian couple (notice we never see a gay male couple?). This is incredibly cheap with glaring continuity errors left and right--notice how one girl runs past the exact same tree twice in a row!!! The story is entirely predictable with some extremely stupid "twists" in it. Also these kids are killed off...for no reason whatsoever! Granted they're ALL annoying but I would at least like a reason! The acting, at first, was so bad I almost switched this off. Worst of all is Alan Ritchson--he plays such a totally obnoxious character (and badly) that I wondered why all these people hung out with him. As the movie progressed, Tom Nagel (as Adam) and Catherine Wreford (as Rachel) actually improved and ended up giving two not bad performances. Everybody else was hopeless.Stupid, sick, sadistic and utterly worthless horror movie. The only truly scary thing about this is that it was made. Skip it.

If you saw the new version of Texas Chainsaw Masacre, Wrong Turn, People Under the Stairs, and a few others, you've already seen this movie. It steals scenes and almost line by line from these others. It is so predictable, I knew what characters were going to do or say down to their exact words a minute before they did just that. There's a chainsaw, there's even an engagement ring, bottled body parts, barbed-wire , and even the ending is a copied. Also, the acting, especially from the mother, is terrible. Absolutely nothing is particularly original. Do not waste your time. It stinks. And as a horror movie, there's not even too much horror. Also it is mis-titled. Was obviously supposed to be called "The Farmer" or something like that judging from what probably was intended as a signature line "It's Harvest Time!". There's no mention of anything connected to a butcher. P.S. Venom is a MUCH better movie.