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Chaw

Synopsis

The future of a small town is threatened by the appearance of a menacing beast. But this is not Jaws, this is Korean black comedy horror Chaw, and the beast is a pig, a giant hammy man-eating boar. The blight of golf courses has caused the beast to abandon its mountainside habitat and hunt for human meat near a town famed for being crimeless. As rumours of the first attacks circulate, the town collapses into chaos and the legendary Hunter Baek arrives to light the barbeque. Packed with as many great frights as laughs, Chaw is a crowd pleasing delight

Reviews

Officer Kim’s move from the mean streets of Seoul to a peaceful country village is not as quiet as he was expecting. Driven from its home in the mountains by city dwellers love of golf, a horrific beast seeks a new home, and exacts its revenge on the humans who have destroyed his land. It’s up to Kim, along with environmentalist Soo-ryun and hunting aficionado Hunter Paek and his team of blood-thirsty gun nuts to put an end to the boars’ killing spree, but can they save their own bacon and avoid becoming pig feed themselves? Along with Norwegian Woods, Chaw is one of two Korean comedies built upon traditional Hollywood horror narratives in Fanomenon’s selection this year. This time, it’s the monster movie: a genre so old that it’s arguably impossible to take itself seriously any more, and this is exactly what Chaw does. As a black comedy, it offers a spin on the conventional monster movies abandoned by Hollywood and the monster powerhouse that was Japan since the days of Gojira with the quirky brand of humour that Korea as of late has come to excel at So can the Asian speciality of the monster movie be revived by the Koreans? There is certainly a gap in the market for a genre which is showing its age and can perhaps not deliver the scares as it did in the golden age of horror. The Host was certainly successful as a Korean monster movie, but is not really comparable because of Chaws emphasis on laughs rather than scares. There’s a nice little subtext of the hunter becoming the hunted  and nature getting its revenge, and city versus country which have all typified the monster movie of late, particularly when the beast is a rural animal, 2007’s New Zealand horror comedy Black Sheep being perhaps the best comparison to the overall tone of Chaw, , replacing the rabid lambs with a massive rampaging pig. Stock characters like the useless, farcical country police who at best throw up and at worst run away at the sight of blood continue the country/city distinction, and are the first of many amusing comedic set-ups. The appearance of the gloriously silly hip hop group Love Space, complete with karaoke subtitles will have you asking ‘why?’, but laughing all the same. It goes without saying that Hunter Paek talking to his dog in Russian for some unexplained reason is similarly bizarre, but this is exactly what Korean comedy does so well. It would be all too easy to say that the comedy doesn’t translate well, but it’s certainly more credible to give the comedic stylings of other cultures a chance; language should not put you off getting a new take on what comedy means internationally and we should not be limited by our own national boundaries, as with any other genre. If it’s a scary monster movie you’re after, however, look elsewhere. But if the quirkiness of Korean humour appeals, then this really is a fine example of what East Asian humour has to offer. It’s great to see a genre film being confident enough to poke fun at its predecessors by not taking itself seriously in the slightest; something which we love at Fanomenon and which is a feature of a lot of our films this year. The Jaws-like set up of a solitary beast terrorising a community which turns into a comedic caper gives Spielberg the finger in an anti-Hollywood way which will always be appealing to fans of world and independent cinema.