‘Butt Boy’ Review

The words don't come easily. If any do, they pretty much form the phrase "buckle up, assholes," because Butt Boy from writer/director Tyler Cormack easily has the strangest premise for a film this year, and that's saying something.

It begins with a rectal exam for Chip (played by Cormack), a bored middle-ager with a bland home life and a void to fill. Turns out he loves the feeling, and so begins his obsession with cramming things up his ass—a bar of soap, the TV remote, maybe even a fucking dog. Children go missing, Chip's wife is concerned, the police come knocking. What. The. Fuck?

Jump ahead nine years and Chip's in AA, the newly-minted sponsor of hard-boiled detective Russell Fox (Tyler Rice). Fox is just trying to clean up his act but positive a new missing child case can be traced back to Chip. But there's nothing on Earth that can prepare either of them for the brutal reality of the man's anal obsession, and as the dragnet closes in, Chip discovers just how deep he's willing to go. Fox's career hangs in the balance and his theories alienate his superiors. A darker secret than anyone's prepared for is slowly uncovered; you think you'll know, but we promise you—you really don't know.

Butt Boy is thus incredibly hard to evaluate. Is it experimental genre cinema or some kind of frat humor descent into nonsense? Is it absurd beyond measure as a test for audiences, or is it over-the-top silly and disgusting because its makers sincerely think ass jokes are funny? Cormack's writing does the job, as does his turn as the anal-obsessed Chip (mostly, anyway). Rice's alcoholic detective, meanwhile, looks and acts, as Chip says at one point, like every detective ever. As for whether this means he's good or bad…well, it's not realistic to assign that line of thinking to this film. He does what he must, and it's fine.

As a lampooning of the genre, then, Butt Boy almost works out; as a very niche film doing things that almost make Human Centipede look like high art (whatever that means), it's hard to understand. As a standalone project judged by its own merits, it's even harder to recommend Butt Boy to anyone outside the most ardent horror/gross-out flick fans. Even then, attempts at mocking corporate America or the ostensibly empty suburban dream are overshadowed by its final disgusting act, one you'll admittedly never see coming.

5
+Like nothing you've seen, promise
-Good luck hanging on til the end

Butt Boy
Directed by Cormack
With Cormack and Rice
Video-on-Demand, NR, 100 min.