Butchered – Matthew A. Clarke

2.5 stars

I’m in two minds with Butchered. I love Matt’s work in general, and this had a really promising storyline, but I’m not completely sold on it.

Butchered is short, and I think it suffers a little for it. Matt almost seemed to shy away from his usual gore and extreme violence to fit into a shorter format. Parts of what the boys were going through were described in detail, but then parts were only summarized; this almost split created a bit of a weird disconnect for me in the story.

The story as a whole felt rushed, and I don’t have as many answers as I wish I did. What happened to the mom? Was there a supernatural element to this or just something I didn’t pick up on? How much time passed between the stream at the start and the events with Wink and Ed? Why was their stream full audio, but the first one was no audio?

I don’t think this was as cohesive as it wanted to be. The story bounced between the past and the present, and it wasn’t always clear how the past events tied into what was happening with the boys. The part with Jackson at the beginning ended up tying in, but it was a shallower connection that I would’ve liked to see explored a little more. What’s his story, and why was he watching the feeds? Was he part of a task force against red rooms but found himself getting too into it? I’m not really sure how he fits into all this.

Red rooms and the deep web in horror are always interesting plots, and Butchered definitely gave that a solid go, but I just couldn’t get as invested in this one as I have in some of Matt’s previous works.