Chaw Korean Movie Review

‘Chaw’ is the summer monster movie in South Korea; but this monster isn’t the typical supernatural fare; instead, it’s something Mother Nature has created and will again. The monster star of this movie is a giant boar with an appetite for humans.

The movie takes place in the town of Sammaeri which has boasted a decade long stretch of peace and crimelessness. However, all this changes when the shredded remains of a woman is found in the nearby woodlands. The search for a human criminal quickly goes south and they soon realize that this was the work of nature, not man. With a world renowned hunter, an ecologist, a detective and a few police officers, the hunt is on for a giant, mutated boar that, out of hunger and ferociousness, has developed a taste for human flesh.

While they hunt the boar, the boar hunts them in a dark cat and mouse game through the forest. This plot may be a tall tale, but it is loosely based on the fact that wild boars have been wrecking havoc on tombs and garbage dumps in their search for food, having been pushed out of their natural habitat by rampant deforestation. With this in mind, this movie is not only a horror, but also a reminder of the damage humanity is causing the environment and how it could come back to haunt us.

This movie stars Jang Hang-sun as the retired hunter Il-man who lost his granddaughter to the boar; Jung Yu-mi, as Suryeon, the biologist in the area who knows that there is something strange in the forests; Park Hyeok-gwon as detective Shin; and Yoon Jae-Moon as the celebrity game hunter Baek.

The final member of the hunting party is police officer Kim, played by Uhm Tae-woong, who only joins the hunt because his Alzheimer ridden mother wanders into the forest. It is five humans against a maddened boar in a fight for survival and often it seems that the boar is set to win.

The pig itself is a character too; it is created through CGI and by the same people who did Star Wars: Episode One aliens. The result is a super huge, mutated wild boar with blood on the brain.

This movie may seem hackneyed and over the top, but the combination of good acting, script, and the fact that it’s not just a horror, but also has some black comedy and a good message about the environment, makes this movie very popular and well worth watching. This is not just a good movie for Koreans, but also for Americans who are also suffering through a wild pig epidemic and will probably be able to relate very well to the horror of having a wild boar start going after humans.

Chaw is a solid horror movie with a splash of dark humor and drama, making it a solid movie to watch and one you’ll probably want to watch a few times. If nothing else, how many other movies feature a mutated super pig?

[Rating 4.5/5]