| Chaw | |
| Director: | Shin Jung-won[1] |
| Producer: | Park Kyung-duk |
| Starring: | Uhm Tae-woong Jung Yu-mi Jang Hang-sun Yoon Je-moon Park Hyuk-kwon |
| Music: | Kim Jun-seong |
| Cinematography: | Kim Yung-chul |
| Editing: | Choi Jae-geun |
| Studio: | Soo Jack Films |
| Distributor: | Lotte Entertainment Finecut[2] |
| Runtime: | 122 minutes |
| Country: | South Korea |
| Language: | Korean |
Chaw, released in the United States as Chawz, is a 2009 South Korean action-adventure film[3] about a mutant killer pig wreaking havoc on a small mountain town, and the ragtag team of five who set out to stop the beast. The Korean title is pronounced "chow", which means "trap" in Chungcheong dialect.
The quiet town of Sammaeri near Mount Jiri has been crime-free for a decade until now. Bodies of villagers begin turning up, making the village leaders nervous just ahead of an organic food fair expected to be a financial windfall. Chun Il-man (Jang Hang-sun), whose granddaughter was one of the victims, is sure that a man-killing boar is behind the crimes. He joins forces with detective Shin (Park Hyuk-kwon) and Kim Kang-soo (Uhm Tae-woong), a reassigned cop from Seoul whose mother has gone missing in the woods. With Byun Soo-ryun (Jung Yu-mi), a biologist studying wild animals, and glory-seeking hunter Baek Man-bae (Yoon Je-moon) on the team to fight the giant killer beast, the five start up the mountain to face their enemy.[4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Director Shin Jung-won said his film adopted a typical Hollywood B movie monster narrative to tackle environmental issues, particularly the serious destruction inflicted on Korea's ecology.[9] He said Korea had never had a film dealing with real-life killer creatures like Razorback, Alligator and Anaconda and was "intrigued by the idea of a familiar animal attacking and killing humans and wanted to create something out of this unexpectedness. But most of all, I wanted something funny and unique."
After filming in Seoul, the production crew and the main actors flew to the United States to shoot special effects scenes. The shooting lasted for 40 days in San Francisco. Misunderstandings in interpreting the nuance of a scene or dialogue sometimes arose between the U.S. special effects team and Korean actors due to different cultural backgrounds, but Uhm said, "after the shooting was over, we formed a strong team spirit, as if we battled together in a war."
It took three years and to design and realize via animatronics, stuntmen with costumes, and CG ― provided by the creative team Polygon Entertainment and Stareast Digital Lab led by Hans Uhlig and Erik Jensen ― a mutated, super-sized pig that develops a taste for human flesh.[10]
Chaw was screened Berlin Film Festival's Film Market, afterwards it was released in 15 countries, including Germany, Switzerland, India, Singapore, Thailand, the United States, and Japan.[11] The film was released in South Korea on July 16, 2009.[12]