Chaw [MA] - Korean

When Officer Kim gets transferred from the city to police duty in the countryside, he’s expecting to have a peaceful job fishing and monitoring the speed of tractors. But when he gets to the village he discovers that he’s in for more than he bargained for. A giant mutant, man-eating boar has been terrorising the village, but the town officials won’t close the farming plots because it’s the tourist season. With time against him, Kim teams up with the bumbling village police, two master hunters, and a special agent from town to track down the boar and rid the village of it. 

The Korean equivalent of Razorback though actually the exact same plot line as Jaws, Chaw is a gory yet sneakily funny black comedy that is not so much about the classically bad monster movie as it is about making fun of authority and taking a stab at Western genre cinema whilst simultaneously taking a stab at the Japanese, which we’ll get to later. It’s gory, it’s strange, and in some places it’s just downright weird, but it makes for an interesting viewing experience. 

As I mentioned the story is an exact replica of Jaws with the giant rubber shark being replaced by a CG boar that would look out of place anywhere really. The small community setting, the town as a farming tourist attraction, the capture of the wrong creature, all are signature steps of the monster movie and, as a Western viewer, you cannot but help being strongly reminded of Jaws the entire way through. 

But in Korean cinematic fashion, this is more than just a monster movie. The mutant boar monster itself can be interpreted as a metaphor for Korea’s past dealings with Japan; indeed the theorised back-story of the boar is that it was genetically mutated during the times of Japanese warfare. A symbol of terror and oppression, the boar itself is an interesting choice of monster, especially when we consider that the film takes places within a farming community. There’s an irony there that definitely won’t be ignored. 

On the other hand, this is a movie about the ineptitude of authority. The village’s Chief of Police is one of the biggest hypocrites ever, never actually getting his hands dirty but taking all the credit for the work of his squad, the police stationed in the city cop more disrespect and lip than a losing football team, and even the town officials are depicted as gullible idiots that try to upstage city slickers with the simple use of the magic word ‘organic’. It’s all very laughable. 

As can be expected of a movie with a man-eating boar as the villain, there is not much horror, but the gore factor is pretty effective with the stomach clenches and churnings being triggered by the use of sound rather than visual depictions of the carnage. Close-ups of the victims’ faces are shown contorting in horror and pain as all that can be heard is the chomping, squelching, and brittle cracking of their bones as the boar feasts on them from the feet up. Whilst it’s not really scary, it’s still pretty nasty. 

Starring Won-young Choi, Tae-woong Eom, Seong-kwang Ha, Yoo-i Ha, Park Hye-jin-i, Yu-mi Jeong, Moon-ee Jo, Ki-Cheon Kim, Josiah D. Lee, Chang-ik Park, Hyuk-kwon Park, Ko Seo-hee, and Je-mun Yun, Chaw is a strange but interesting film, especially to a Western viewer. Filled with action, the hunt, drama, comedy, gore, and a story that’s recognisable in any language, it’s a film where some things do get lost in translation, but still results in an interesting viewing experience.