User reviews

CHAW is a South Korean monster movie that attempts to ride the wave of popularity that followed the similarly-themed THE HOST; while it can't hope to hold a candle to that outstanding film, it proves to be an entertaining enough comic yarn that offers more genuine laughs than most. It occupies a specific niche of Asian movies whose quirkiness alone is enough to give them instant cult appeal.

The story is a simple enough effort about a giant wild boar terrorising a rural community. There's all the usual hypocrisy amongst the police officers and detectives responsible for the village's safety, along with an outsider hero through whose eyes we witness the proceedings. The plot isn't dissimilar to the Aussie flick RAZORBACK, with various oddballs joining together to beard the beast in its lair – although, of course, it doesn't go entirely to plan.

Monster flicks like this live or die on the strength of their titular menace, and Chaw himself is a good 'un; a very well animated (with a mix of animatronics and CGI, it seems to me) and truly gigantic creature who chews on his victims in a series of grisly death scenes. The action follows the usual template, building up to big attacks and the final search-and-destroy mission, and it's all handled with relative aplomb.

The film goes for the humorous note throughout and it works; there's enough meat on the bones of the story to make it an enjoyable outing, even for those who've watched a dozen similar films. The acting is typically strong from the Korean performers, and director Shin Jeong-won clearly knows what he's doing.

I don't understand why funny, dumb, and unattractive always come as a package in movies. Pretty people can be funny ... and dumb too. But anyway ... this little film is an entertaining ride. It's got funny, dumb, and unattractive people in it along with a giant pig that likes to dine on human beings. It's not a horror movie at all, except in concept. It's a comedy and it is quintessentially Korean. It's cast very well and everyone in it is earnest in their portrayal of absurdities. The cops are macho bumbling idiots, and people, and the pig, fall down a lot. As with most every South Korean film the production values are great but don't go in expecting a lot of good monsterness. The film is more about the people and the community than it is about the boar. The creature alternates between a couple guys in a furry jumpsuit and medium grade CGI but it gets the job done and doesn't look cheap. Chaw doesn't take itself seriously and if you don't, you will enjoy it. It's funny and entertaining.

So the title of this movie is...? The Korean title is "Chawu", but the DVD movie I got from Amazon is titled "Chaw", but the one shown on the cover on IMDb is titled "Chawz".

For a black comedy, then "Chaw" had surprisingly few laughs. There were some here and there, but they were far in between. But that is quite alright, because the movie is quite entertaining and doesn't necessarily rely on the comedy to carry it along.

The story is about a police officer from Seoul who end up in a small rural village, where life is supposed to be quiet and uneventful. But the small idyllic village is terrorized by a marauding boar of gargantuan proportions.

"Chaw" is fun and entertaining, as it has some interesting characters and good dialogue, plus the effects in the movie were actually quite good. Don't expect Hollywood blockbuster effects - but they get the job done, and they do so nicely.

"Chaw" is not groundbreaking in any way, and it is unlikely to make a lasting impression, but still, it is well worth a watch and does provide good entertainment. A good Korean movie in the likes of "Razorback". Hardly worthy of a place alongside "The Host" (the Korean monster movie, not the Meyer's pseudo-teenage Sci-Fi), but still fun enough.

Chawz is another entry in the horror/comedy genre, this one coming from South Korea. Not as good as The Host, also from South Korea, a couple of years ago, but there is still some enjoyment to be had. The plot moves along a little too slowly for this type of film and has more than one similarity with the plot of the original Jaws. The comedy plays more to the slapstick side, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your taste in comedy. I personally found a few gags that made me smile, but nothing that made me laugh. The actors do a convincing job with their characters, but no one will blow you away or steal the show. The visual effects are good, using a mix of practical and computer generated, but not up to the normal standard of major North American films. If you have seen other movies of this type from this part of the world, the effects are on par. If you're expecting something along the lines of Slither or Army of Darkness, you most likely will be disappointed or even bored with this. But if you have seen The Host or Tokyo Zombie, this film is similar in tone and pacing and while never reaching the quality of The Host or the comedic absurdity of Tokyo Zombie, Chawz is an enjoyable monster movie. Flawed, but enjoyable.

Okay so the plot is basically about a huge over-sized boar that is terrorizing and killing the people in the country size, and it has some Korean humor thrown in as well. This is one of those movies that should not be taken seriously and just accept the things that happen in order to enjoy it, the characters in this also act very awkward in certain situations that adds to the humor. As monster movies go this isn't a great movie, but the characters are developed for the most part with there own motives and the slapstick humor actually worked well in this. The special effects are not that good but passable for a B-movie. The character interaction and having more to do with the community than the actual monster itself was a nice change of pace, because for this movie it works without showing too much monster action. Sure there are plenty of better monster movies out there, but this is still worth a look.

6/10

Starts well, some good funny characters introduced. Boar fear without it being seen much, works well in 1st half.

Then, having seen so many movies on lion hunt, tiger hunt, shark hunt movies, this movie's use of that pattern is hard to miss: monster attacks in a mass festival, that was allowed by an authority overriding warnings, a team of pro hunters is hired, they kill one & celebrate, but the real killer monster strikes, some retired legendary hunter takes on himself to finish the job, some traps don't work, some gunners fail to shoot in nervousness, characters tell each other their life stories around a gathering before the final showdown, etc.

So many of these ideas was used, with some humour definitely and some poor execution. Boar's unconvincing and clearly artificial look & movement was hard to reconcile with. Not enough fear/caution/naturalness towards the end seen in the hunters who enter the boar's territory, plus cliched poor decisions like not shooting, running slow with many pauses while being chased, easily escaping the boar who has trapped him a meter away.

Disgusting show of eating: a pig-head, a live fish in boiling water, bugs/larvae, bats. May be part of Korean culture but was horrible to watch. Boar's killing/killed scenes needed blood and body parts and that was fitting.

A 4-5/10 rating would be fair, +1 for the final chase on a rail line, -1 for the disgusting food shown.

I watched the English translation of this Korean monster movie. The original movie is a silly throw-back (in the vein of Lake Placid) about a killer boar. But what's best about it is the absolutely hysterically awful English dubbing. It is easily some of the best bad acting I have ever enjoyed (including every Godzilla movie ever). It must truly be seen to be believed. The film itself is actually a fairly amusing, purposely silly 'monster' movie. Someone else on here said that this movie feels like something David Lynch might have made if he ever made a creature feature... and they were completely right, with all of the bizarre seemingly nonsensical characters and offbeat dialog. But, at over 2 hours, runs way too long. Still, I recommend this film for any fan of strange movies or creature features. But do yourself a HUGE favor and watch the English-dubbed version over a subtitled one.

No this isn't a Bruce Lee film. This is a South Korean giant wild killer pig movie – "another one?", I hear you sigh.

When the self proclaimed "crimeless village" of Sameri in South Korea is beset by a 500kg 6 foot tall killer boar it's fair to say the locals are unprepared and largely incapable of handling the beastie. After all, all bar one of the cops are a bunch of lazy idiots, the new guy arrived in town that day and the local citizens would win a "Crazy-off" with the 90s TV town of Twin Peaks hands down.

Locals start falling off the map and reappearing as various limbs and fragments of body-parts, newly interred corpses are summarily exhumed, and buses full of curious city folk show up to pick the local organic produce – but are really there to get Chaw-gnawed.

So outside help is sourced, including experienced and renowned hunters, a pack of dogs, and some skylarking adventure seekers. The locals want the thing dead, the hunters want trophies and a bunch of greenies just want everyone to get along. The hunt goes on and a large pig is taken down – ce-le-brate good times… Come on? Nope, it turns out that the big fat beast wasn't Oprah on another of her around the world publicity stunts but the psycho killer pig's missus.

Now: it's personal.

As tends to happen in these film a rag tag bunch of disparate individuals forms to take on Porky high in the mountains that flank the village, each with their own specialty, motivation and story to tell – usually late at night around a campfire in a moment of surprising vulnerability.

Now this is a big scary animal movie so I can't finish without discussing the big scary animal, and this is where Chaw really disappoints. In a few scenes Chaw is a guy(s) in a suit and in close ups and confined spaces it looks like a puppet. Both of these efforts were acceptable… in long shots and action sequences however Chaw was 100% distracting CGP – Computer Generated Pork. The size and weight of Chaw seemed to vary greatly in shot to shot, he had no obvious momentum or force when he was changing direction or running, and in certain scenes he just looked damned… cuddly.

In the early going they were wise to minimise the sightings and on screen depiction of Chaw, towards the end when he was all over the shop I almost laughed every time he appeared on screen – especially when he morphed into cuddly-wuddly piggy-wiggy for some shots.

Chaw has no real gore at all to speak of, most of the deaths appear offscreen and the only real evidence aside from muffled screams and quick cutaways are the random body parts alluded to earlier. There is way too much exposition and unnecessary character development for what is essentially a silly B flick with an audience only demanding "get to the killer pig!", leaving us with a 90 minute film that unfortunately takes two hours to watch.

In this way it reminded me of The Host from a couple years back, but while that film supplied a carefully rendered, original beastie as the primary threat Chaw is only able to proffer a size changing, largely unreal – and often fluffy! – giant pork chop.

Final Rating – 5 / 10. For most lovers of slightly obscure cinema "South Korean killer pig" flick is a big enough hook to initiate a search for the video shop card – it sure was for me. But Chaw is one little piggie that should have stayed home.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It was what I expected which is kind of a Jaws on land movie but what made it so much more is the black comedy through out the entire movie. I also enjoyed the crazy witch doctor lady and crazy mom quite a bit.

The giant boar was also excellent.

I love a bit of word play, especially homophones, and really wanted to write something about how this film was a crushing bore (boar=bore...geddit?); unfortunately, I didn't find it boring per se, just extremely irritating, being full of unlikeable characters and zany (ie. crap) humour, and rarely delivering on its promise of gruelling, gory pig-based horror (don't even get me started on the design and CGI of the pig itself). Never mind, I have a back-up pun prepared for such an emergency: the film is a chore! (Chaw=chore...God, I'm good!).

Yup, it's hard work getting to the good bits in this giant killer pig movie from Korea. The insufferable comedy is easily the film's most annoying aspect, with the unnecessary character development coming a close second (all the more grating since everyone is so unappealing); at over two hours long, it all starts to get rather annoying. Eventually, my patience was rewarded with a fun chase scene and well executed final showdown, the massive porker pursuing the hero and heroine to a disused factory, but boy was it a struggle to get there.

I very much enjoy cheesy creature feature flicks. Frankly the really cheesy ones like sharktopus can be a lot of fun, but they are not usually very good films objectively. Occasionally though you get a film like Jaws, which is both a great film and a great creature feature.

I came here after watching the movie to review it and was shocked this has an average score of approx 6/10. That way undersells the movie in my opinion. It has a really interesting sense of humour, difficult to describe really but made me chuckle. The special effects arent amazing but they are used sparingly and only where needed. The characters are memorable and interesting and the story is engaging.

Honestly I would say this was one of the best creature features I have seen, which was why I was so shocked when i saw the score here! Great film worth watching.

Chaw (2009) is a South Korean movie currently available on Tubi. The storyline follows a small town with a series of dead bodies racking up in a local park. The local police department thinks genetically engineered boars are behind the attacks. Could boars really be behind all of the killings? This movie is directed by Jeong-won Shin (Night of the Undead) and stars Tae-woong Eom (Forever the Moment), Philip Hersh (Red Cliff) and Yu-mi Jung (Train to Busan). The storyline for this movie focuses more on the comedy than the horror. There's some classic cheesy humor in this and it takes about an hour to get to the boar and see the actual killings. Until that it's the classic see a body, then you don't, then you see the police standing over the body; however, once the boar arrives the CGI to create it is actually pretty good. Overall this is a film with a lot of dialogue that is slow and probably didn't need to be two hours. I'd score this a 3/10 and only recommend seeing this if nothing better is available to watch.

I've never been more entertained randomly walking into a room before. I have to thank my friend's wife for randomly having it on and hooking me because of the insane amount of drunken people and shenanigans within the first 20 minutes of the movie. I mean this is by no means a well scripted or shot movie and I truly believe it just went for zany and succeeded completely.

Between the utter lack of a scene or even time transition (except once after the grand daughter scene)this movie was shoddy, sporadic and confusing at times. Like I must have blinked when it was established that the main character had a pregnant wife cause she wasn't in the truck when they tried to ditch the mother. Many questions are left unanswered but the one major thing to take away from the movie, is if you ever see the camera pan out for a more horizontal shot while you're walking along...prepare to get sideswiped by something.

I could continue with how the film work like randomly changes when they have scenes that look like crime drama shooting or the artsy film noir kind of shot, but that's taking away from the true beauty. My point of course being that regardless of budget, insanity or bad film work...this movie delivers. Don't go into this expecting a horror movie with a man- eating boar, go into just expecting to be entertained.

This film gets a 10/10 from me because it's entertaining beyond words and we need more films like this. If you can find beauty in the "so bad that it's actually genius genre", then this is for you.

Transplanted to a remote village station, a police officer sent to investigate a series of strange animal attacks finds the area is part of the hunting grounds belonging to a vicious, man-eating boar and must team up with a group of eccentric locals to stop its bloodthirsty rampage.

Frankly, this was quite an uneven creature feature. When this one works, a lot of its positives come from the exceptionally enjoyable creature feature setups. There is a lot of great action within here, from the first attacks in the outskirts of the village where the victims are killed off in savage attacks to the first real appearance of the creature when it strikes the fruit-field and drags a victim away. That this leads into the stellar hunting scene in the wilderness followed by the utterly phenomenal massacre at the festival to celebrate the capture which is one of the finest parts of the film being filled with some absolutely stellar action. The wild and frenzied finale, going from a series of encounters in the forest to the final confrontation in the factory is a great finish and offers even more fun to like about it. Coupled with the great gore from its vicious kills, some decent comedy and practical pig-effects, these hold it up over it's few minor flaws. Among it's most egregious faults is the fact that this one really goes for an uneven tone that's somewhat distracting overall here. The influx of comedy at times works nicely, yet there are numerous times where comes off as distracting more than anything, especially with gags like the repeatedly falling down a hill, stumbling across loose body parts in the woods or encountering ravening drunks in the middle of the village which are just part of the comedic touches featured in here. These are bland, boring gags that just eat up time here to make this one seem far longer than it really needs to be, as this tone clashes wildly with the more serious creature feature action presented here. Likewise, the film just in general is far too long and doesn't really need to be as lengthy as it is since these are just unneeded and don't add much to the film. Not only is the comedy aspect of the film way too engaged but there are way too many sideplots about the people of the village that have little reason for being included, ranging from the treatment of the mother he has to take care of to the rather eccentric characters living in the village that are shown engaging in rather full detail of their lives while living in the village and all the time spent on rehearsing for the video they film out in the wild are just pointless filler that drags away from it's best feature, the giant man-eating pig running around so it's far longer than it really needs to be. These here are what really hold this one down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.