A Slasher Salad Nobody Ordered
There are bad horror movies, and then there’s The Butchers — a cinematic crime scene where good taste was butchered long before the fake blood started flying. Directed by Steven Judd (a man who apparently thought “what if Night at the Museum but with serial killers and zero sense?” was a winning pitch), The Butchers is less a film and more an endurance test.
This 2014 disaster goes by several names—Death Factory, The Factory, or, if we’re being honest, “Please Make It Stop.” It’s a movie so confused about its own identity it needs therapy. You can tell everyone involved was trying to make something scary, but somewhere between “Book of the Dead” and “bus full of disposable characters,” it forgot what a plot was and just started throwing blood at the wall to see what stuck. Spoiler: none of it did.
The Premise: A Museum of Murderers and No Sense of Direction
The movie starts off with Simon (Damien Puckler) having nightmares about clubbing his abusive father to death—because nothing says “fun popcorn horror” like unresolved domestic trauma. He’s on a bus with his brother and a handful of passengers who collectively have the charisma of wet bread.
Their trip comes to a halt when the bus breaks down near a creepy ghost town. Now, if you’ve ever seen a horror movie in your life, you know what’s next: they split up, make stupid decisions, and everyone dies. The Butchers doesn’t just follow that formula—it eats it, regurgitates it, and calls it dinner.
In this ghost town lies “The Death Factory,” a museum dedicated to the world’s most infamous serial killers—Albert Fish, John Wayne Gacy, Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, and the Zodiac Killer. If you’re thinking that sounds like a theme park for people who own too many trench coats, you’re not wrong.
Then there’s JB (Semi Anthony), a sleazy lawyer who wants to buy the property. When the owner refuses, JB stabs him and—because this movie refuses to stay in one genre—uses the Book of the Dead to summon the spirits of history’s most notorious murderers. Because of course the serial killer museum has occult blood samples. This script wasn’t written; it was assembled by accident.
The Resurrection: Dead Killers and Deader Acting
Enter our murderers, each resurrected from history to slaughter random nobodies in an abandoned town. What should have been a horror fan’s fantasy quickly devolves into an after-school skit gone rogue.
Albert Fish looks like your uncle who overshares on Facebook. John Wayne Gacy has all the menace of a drunk clown at a county fair. Ed Gein somehow resembles a kindly janitor who just wandered onto set. And Jack the Ripper—reimagined here as a lesbian woman with a sword—is the kind of “progressive twist” that makes you wonder if the filmmakers were just pulling ideas out of a hat labeled Problematic but Spicy.
These killers are supposed to be terrifying, but they mostly wander around like they’re lost at a Renaissance fair. The dialogue doesn’t help. At one point, characters literally read from the Book of the Dead “for fun.” Because who doesn’t crack open a satanic relic just to spice up a camping trip?
The special effects? Imagine if someone spilled ketchup on a Halloween costume and decided to film it. Every death scene feels like it was shot in one take with the camera operator trying not to laugh. When the Zodiac sets someone on fire, it looks less like horror and more like a music video for a very confused metal band.
Simon Says… I Absorb Serial Killers?
Now, here’s where The Butchers transcends bad and enters “biblically stupid.” After killing Albert Fish, Simon somehow absorbs his “power” in a puff of killer dust. He proceeds to stab Gacy and Jack the Ripper too, absorbing their powers like he’s playing a serial killer version of Pokémon Snap.
This means we now have a protagonist who’s part bus passenger, part avenging angel, and part serial killer Voltron. He’s the chosen one—which would be fine if the movie didn’t treat this revelation like a footnote between gore scenes.
Meanwhile, JB and the resurrected killers start murdering each other like it’s an evil reality show. Ed Gein stabs Dahmer. JB kills Gein. Everyone’s double-crossing everyone else, but it’s so chaotically edited that you can’t tell who’s dying, who’s coming back, or who’s just taking a nap in a pool of fake blood.
By the time Simon gets impaled, resurrected, and then snaps JB’s neck, you’ve stopped trying to follow the story. You’re just clapping that it’s almost over.
The Twist: Satan Drives a Bus
But The Butchers has one last punchline waiting in its clown car of nonsense. Remember the bus driver? The one who vanished early on? Turns out, he’s Satan.
Yes. Satan. The Prince of Darkness. The Lord of the Underworld. Apparently, he took a break from ruling Hell to drive a charter bus through rural America. You almost want to admire the absurdity. Almost.
The movie ends with Satan resurrecting JB for another round of evil, muttering something about “Hell to pay.” By that point, the only Hell is the one the audience is trapped in.
The Acting: Dead Eyes and Wooden Souls
The cast of The Butchers gives performances so lifeless they make the resurrected killers look enthusiastic. Damien Puckler delivers every line like he’s reading the ingredients off a cereal box. Semi Anthony as JB at least tries to bring some manic energy, but it comes off like a motivational speaker on cocaine.
The supporting cast exists mainly to scream, trip, and die. It’s like the director wandered into a bus station, asked who wanted to be in a movie, and started filming immediately.
Even the killers underperform. Gacy, Dahmer, and Gein—names that should inspire pure dread—come across like bored reenactors at a murder museum in need of a coffee break.
The Look: Shot on a Calculator
Visually, The Butchers looks like it was filmed entirely on a Nokia phone by someone who forgot to clean the lens. The lighting is either “too dark to see” or “blinding flashlight in your face.” The editing is so choppy it could give you motion sickness, and the score sounds like leftover royalty-free music from a rejected Goosebumps episode.
The supposed “ghost town” setting looks suspiciously like a California ranch someone rented for the weekend. And the Death Factory museum? It’s clearly a barn with Halloween decorations and some bad Etsy props.
The Humor: Unintentional Comedy Gold
Despite all of this, The Butchers is not without entertainment value—just not the kind it was going for. Watching it feels like discovering a lost Sharknado sequel that forgot to add sharks.
There’s something endearingly absurd about watching a possessed Simon power-up by inhaling serial killer dust while Satan honks a bus horn in the background. It’s the kind of stupidity you can’t manufacture on purpose—it has to be born naturally, in the wild, like a cinematic cryptid.
You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll question your life choices. And by the time the credits roll, you’ll feel strangely grateful that movies like this exist—so the rest of cinema looks better by comparison.
Final Thoughts: A Film Only Satan Could Love
The Butchers is a mess—a glorious, gory, hilariously misguided mess. It’s proof that more isn’t always better: more killers, more blood, more plot twists, and yet somehow, less sense.
It’s a film where Satan drives a bus, Jack the Ripper is a lesbian, and serial killers engage in a deathmatch while a guy named Simon absorbs their souls like Pokémon cards. It’s not horror—it’s high camp in a bloodstained trench coat.
Verdict: 1.5 out of 5 cursed bus rides.
Watch it with friends, a strong drink, and the understanding that you’re about to witness cinematic taxidermy. It’s not scary. It’s not smart. But it is unforgettable—and in its own twisted way, that’s almost worth the ticket to Hell.
