BUTT BOY is Se7en with a Sphincter

Chip (Tyler Cornack) lives a bland existence. Working as tech support at a company, trapped in a loveless marriage, and totally disinterested in his duties as a father and husband, Chip discovers the joys of anal insertion during a prostate exam. What begins as a fixation grows to a murderous compulsion in the new horror crime thriller Butt Boy. Leading the discharge into absurdity, writer-director, and star, Tyler Cornack pulls off a high-concept thriller about a rectophiliac on a rampage and the one detective that can stop him. While Butt Boy is actually a very funny, tongue-in-cheeks homage to crime dramas, the pic sags a bit here and there, making something that could have been great, just really good.

We meet Detective Russell Fox (Tyler Rice) as he is conducting drug raids and relishing the violent nature of his job. Demons are plenty in this alcoholic gumshoe and he makes his first AA meeting. It is at this same meeting that Chip has been going to fight his secret urge to shove anything, and I mean anything, into his poo hole. Already the cause of multiple disappearances including a TV remote, a game piece, the family dog, a neighborhood child, Chip has been able to hide in plain sight while battling his urge. As luck would have it Chip gets assigned to be Russell’s sponsor and immediately the red flags are apparent. As Russell has his first meeting with Chip over a cheap coffee house dinner, the detective in him begins to see clues that his new sponsor might be tied to a string of disappearances years prior. The cat and mouse games begin and Detective Russell relentlessly pursues the shady Chip before he squeezes in another victim.

At one point, arguably one of the funniest in the film, Chief Lazara (Brad Potts) lays out Russell’s hunch about Chip being the man behind countless crimes by way of cramming them into his colon. It is here that the measured pace and the straight tone of the comedy perfectly captures why this movie works. This is Se7en with a sphincter. Look at any murder mystery and instead of the suspect murdering, switch that out with “shoved them up his butt” and you have Butt Boy. It is the marriage of a junior-high concept with the crisp polish of a detective story. A pairing done to such an extreme that it works.

The pic is not without faults though. Let’s throw out the whole “Oh that’s so unrealistic” argument because that isn’t the point. One of the few problems Butt Boy has is it’s habit of lingering on moments in the final reel. With Russell trapped and seemingly helpless, his scenes tend to drag, giving us a minute to pull out of the absurdity. I am fully aware that I am nit picking a movie about a guy’s posterior, but this is my job.

All things considered, Butt Boy is good fun, sans the clean part. This is what it would look like if a 7th grader had the skill to make a competently crafted thriller. This is an inside joke that is so well executed that you can’t help but buy into the joke to see how everything comes out. As broad as a poop joke and as crafty as a Fincher movie, Butt Boy is a keester cake that flushes on the first try, leaving only the scent of pine.