For you lovers of weird cinema have a I got a doozy of a flick for you. A month ago I reviewed the latest live action incarnation of The Tick and after seeing this movie what I’m about to describe feels very much like it could have been part of that universe, and I almost wish it was.
The title, Butt Boy, is fairly dead on, then again I can’t imagine what else you could call this film, but before I get into specifics let’s set the timeline mood. For a good chunk of time I got the feeling this was not taking place in the 21st century. There are no cell phones present, people who do place calls do it on corded phones and pay phones, yet the main character, who’s an office worker, seems to be using modern day computer technology, which is the only odd duck element in what looks to be a story set in the mid or late 90s.
There are two time jumps in the film, the first one taking place during the opening credits, and this first one was not unexpected, the second one in the final act was, though as I write this I’m currently on the fence about how much of the tale I want to reveal, and that ‘one month later’ time jump does factor into the spoiler section of this review, if I choose to go that route, and frankly I just might.
The movie is a dark almost slow burn modern noir comedy with a prologue that’s fairly low key and “normal” as it introduces us to a rather boring human being by the name of Chip Gutchell (Tyler Cornack), his wife, Anne (Shelby Dash), and his baby. Everything looks normal in his life, but there’s an undercurrent that will give you the impression you’re watching a potential mass shooter . . . or a serial killer. If you guessed the latter you get a prize. But he’s by far not your average serial killer, at least not in the way he goes about “killing.” Chip has a “super power,” one that has some missing components as in we’re never sure how he discovered he had it, but it seems to have been discovered when he had his first rectal exam. After that we’ll see how he gets off by putting things up his ass, but these things are never seen again; a bar of soap and a remote are the first to go.
That has to be one hell of an ass to house a huge bar of soap and a TV remote. But then he leers at his dog in a way that will make you scream, oh, fuck, he’s gonna put that dog up his ass!! And he does, and it’s never seen again. That must have been a hell of a rush, because when he’s at the park with his wife, he pays too much attention to that mother with her baby, and has Anne take their kid home. This is where he graduates from animals to humans, and that baby vanishes. But I never understood how he could have gotten that baby away from his mother to a degree where she can’t find him, and/or can’t link Chip to the vanishing. How did he pull that off? It’s never revealed.
This prologue ends with an attempted suicide that doesn’t work, and now we have our first time jump (nine years later), and our introduction to the cop who’s going to bring this ass cramming office drone down. By the way none of the living things are shown going into his asshole, not the dog, or later on the kitten he takes into an alleyway, though we do see him with a light bulb in his ass, and (SPOILER ALERT) a grown human being! With people Chip has an attack mode, he drops his pants and this wind, presumably generated by his asshole, will suck in anything he’s aiming it at.
Chip views this need to shove things into his hole an addiction and has been going to AA meetings ever since he put that woman’s baby into his asshole, but hides it from the others by telling them he’s an alcoholic. It’s helped, and he’s been on the wagon for those nine long years, until he meets a new member, an actual alcoholic by the name of Russell Fox (Tyler Rice), and Fox is a detective, and now Chip’s been made Russ’s sponsor.
Chip relapses on the job, during a day when his co-workers have their kids in playing hide and go seek, and when one of the kids decides to hide under Chip’s desk he decides to cram him up his ass. This again is never shown, and I’d like to know how he did that in a crowded workspace without anyone knowing what happened, or the cries of the child bringing attention to him.
Guess who’s put on the case of this new missing kid?
That’s right, Russell, and from that interrogation with Chip you can feel Fox suspects his sponsor may be up to no serial killing good. Now how Fox makes the leap to coming up with the idea this dude his cramming kids up his ass is something I’d also like to made privy too. His only evidence at two crime scenes (the kid in the office and the missing kitten) are two tiny hunks of dried shit! But Russell Fox is a character, and actor Rice plays him like a combination of a young Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro; I thought it was a really great performance, and it helps that I’ve never seen this guy in anything before, preventing that overexposure curse some actors get because they’re in every other goddamn movie. I personally thought he was the standout actor, and I would love to see this Fox detective in other movies. But how he makes that leap into the unbelievable, with such little evidence, is a headscratcher.
Give this movie the time it needs to build, because it does build to a third act that is a little bit wacko and one I think I’m going to spoil just a little bit, or maybe a lot depending on how look at it, so here it goes. We’ll eventually see where everything Chip puts up his ass goes, and I may be over thinking this, but it’s something I had to do. My theory his ass his connected to a “pocket dimension,” a dimension that looks like Bronson Caves in California, because that’s where this part of the movie was filmed, though it’s augmented with CGI to give it a dreamy, red atmosphere with “particles” floating around. Yes, this is what the inside of Chip’s asshole pocket dimension looks like, and that kid he crammed into nine years ago is alive and now nine years old, but even that seems implausible. Without anyone taking care of it inside this asshole dimension it should have died. This is where the second time jump occurs, after Russell is sucked into Chip’s hole, he’s been there for a whole month, with that now nine-year old boy, that second kid, and that dog he crammed up there. The kitten was nowhere to be seen, but Russell also found all the inanimate objects things Chip put into his asshole over the years.
There’s a shot of the three of them huddled in a circle eating. But what the hell do you subsist on inside an asshole? It looked like shit, but why . . . how . . . apparently this kept them alive for a whole month. But what about water? The human body can’t live long without water. This is never addressed. I told you I was over thinking this concept too much, but this is shit I think the director/writer needed to flesh out, and Cornack is also the director and co-writer of the movie.
So, how does one extricate themselves from this kind of situation? I will reveal there’s a surprisingly upbeat ending, but not for Chip. And that’s where I’m going to end this review, because you need to experience this movie with as little knowledge about it as possible. I know I’ve failed somewhat in that regard, this is a movie review, I had too, things needed to be said obviously, but I kept others things unsaid—two other things.
Butt Boy is available now from Epic Pictures in blu-ray form only! You can buy it on Amazon or from Epic Pictures directly!
Video/Audio/Subtitles: 1080p 2.20:1 high definition widescreen—5.1 English Dolby Digital (surround), 2.0 English Dolby Digital (stereo)—English SDH subs only
Extras included . . .
- Audio commentary with director/co-writer/actor Tyler Cornack, actor Tyler Rice & co-writer/co-producer Ryan Koch
- Behind The Scenes (12:20)
- Butt Boy Official Trailer (2:14)
- Green Band Trailer (2:14)
- Epic Trailers (Tainted, Transference, Torpedo: U-235)
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