Filmmaker Tyler Cornack manages the wildly absurd premise of “Butt Boy” to create a thrilling and exceptionally well-made film you have to see to believe.
Chip (Tyler Cornack) is dragging himself from moment to moment. While at work he stares at the clock until it hits 5pm, even then not showing an iota of emotion. The corny corporate cheering as an employee gets promoted, the complete lack of interest from his wife, and the looming unease of his first prostate exam, Chip doesn’t have much (anything) going on that excites him.
There’s a major disconnect in this guy’s life, a void if you will, and he learns during the prostate exam the only way to fill this void is by inserting objects into his butt. Like any obsession, his need grows, requiring more and more to completely satisfy his desires. Soap and remotes in his butt escalates into dogs and babies. It’s a sickening addiction and an unthinkable act.
And it’s just the kind of gloriously twisted and bonkers story you’d think it would be.
The film cuts to nine years later, and Chip is now a sponsor at an Alcoholics Anonymous support group, seemingly having realized that shoving animals and children up his ass to be lost and gone forever was a problem.
Complicating matters is the arrival of Russell (Tyler Rice), a hard drinking cop looking to kick his alcoholism, with Chip as his sponsor. When Russell describes his love of alcohol and explains the details of pouring his favorite drink (Tom Collins over ice), his passionate descriptions triggers Chip’s memories of his love for disappearing objects into his butt.
As they say, old habits die hard. And when a kid goes missing on ‘take your child to work day’ at the office, Russell suspects Chip may have something to do with it.
Tyler Rice as Russell is superb as the self-loathing, tell-it-like-it-is cop.
He’s a scrappy fighter who’d be the dog in the pack unwilling to give up or share the bone, snarling and growling to keep it. He’s a damn good cop, perhaps as good a cop as he is a drinker — with his second addiction seeming to be his job.
Chip on the other hand is a soft spoken, boring, overly vanilla, blend-in-with-the-crowd kind of guy. You’d never guess that he puts children in his ass, not in a million years. He just doesn’t have that look to him.
Perhaps that’s what makes his character so hard to pin down and somewhat unsettling. Cornack (who also wrote and directed) plays the character, who possesses such an outrageous ability, with a blatantly dull and emotionless demeanor.
Butt Boy is madness.
It’s the kind of story you write down at three in the morning when waking from a dream; reading it the next day and wondering what the hell you were thinking. It shouldn’t work. But, damn, does it work.
Cornack directs the film as a straight story (for the most part), and the ridiculousness of it all takes a backseat to the neo-noir approach that creates one of the most unique, off-putting, disturbing, and wildly successful films of the year.
So much of the story involves entities governed by structure and rules: a police station, a corporate office building, support groups, and the nuclear family. But there’s light and shadows that battle on the screen in most scenes, hinting at the good vs. evil undercurrent that hums beneath the surface of both the movie and people in general.
You never know what secrets and darkness exists in the hearts of others…or in their asses for that matter.
A movie about a guy who vanishes people into his butt wouldn’t be complete without a journey into this particular anatomical space — and, don’t worry, we get that.
Butt Boy is an unbelievable film. And like all the objects and animals and people that found themselves lost on the wrong side of an asshole, you’ll find yourself swallowed by Butt Boy…and happy to get lost in its story.
Overall Rating (Out of 5 Butterflies): 4
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