A huge wild boar terrorizes a small mountain village, so now they must try to kill the huge wild boar.
There haven’t been made so many monster movies in South Korea. The most popular monster movie made in South Korea is The Host. Chaw and The Host are two movies you can’t quite compare. The Host is a much deeper and suspenseful movie, while Chaw is more like Tremors, and especially Jaws. So the only thing they have in common is two angry animals that are terrorizing the humans.
Chaw has a huge wild boar that kills people, and it’s furious. But I can’t say that the wild boar in Chaw is frightening. You don’t get the same feeling when you see the wild boar compared to a big dinosaur or a great white shark. Wild animals in the forest aren’t as frightening as sea creatures. So the tension that you experience when watching the first Jaws movie isn’t found in Chaw. There’s nothing that can beat Jaws. That’s the best movie in this genre, and it will always be.
The wild boar is made of CGI, and the CGI isn’t very good. It’s easy to see that Chaw didn’t have the biggest budget when the wild boar shows up. The way it moves is bad, so we see a big hairball running around that sticks out like a sore thumb. It doesn’t fit in with the environment. That takes you out of the movie and the suspense it tries to create.
Chaw isn’t a suspenseful movie. It’s a movie with dark humor and goofy characters. The thing I appreciated most was the humor. The hunt for the wild boar becomes boring in the long run. Imagine that you are watching a monster movie like Tremors with goofy characters, then you are on the right track.
I was a little disappointed that they didn’t use more of the dark humor. The crazy woman that looks like a witch was my favorite character in the whole movie. I can say the same thing about the cop’s mother. This character is also hilarious. If they had used these two characters too much, it could have ruined these characters. But they should have used them in some more scenes. They deserved more screen time.
The two hunters must be the worst two hunters I’ve seen in a movie. They can’t hit an animal from 10 meters. They should lose their hunting licenses!
Chaw isn’t a gory movie. It’s just like Jaws when they believe they have killed the wild boar and cut it open to see what it has been eating. We see some intestines, and that’s all.
Chaw is a playful movie that succeeds with the silly humor it offers. The wild boar isn’t the highlight when the CGI is so bad. But the characters are fun to follow. They have distinct personalities.