Nerds That Geek Movie Review: 'Euthanizer'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

When we think of the cinema, we think of…escape. Escape from the everyday world and our everyday lives, where we can just settle in and enjoy the wonder of a beautiful story that carries us away to incredible places before we return to the real world and go about our business once again. It’s something that rings true about cinema since we’ve all seen incredible wonders on the silver screen throughout the years, but sometimes, we forget that this medium can tell any story that it wants and sometimes…those stories aren’t pretty.
 
Granted, there are plenty of genres that come to mind when you think about the ‘dark side’ of cinema, such as the horror genre for instance, since awful things lurk in the shadows on a regular basis in that universe, but that doesn’t quite apply here. Because there are movies out there that are about sour people and sour places where everything isn’t sunshine and rainbows and these are the films that quite frankly, we tend to avoid since they remove the wonder of the cinema and plunk us down in the dark parts of our world we’d like to forget about and recently, I had the opportunity to watch a movie that fits that darker mold in Euthanizer.
 
Now in this motion picture, we are introduced to a man named Viejo who lives quite the simple life, one away from the rest of the people in his town and he’s just fine with that. But, despite his proclivity to avoid humanity when possible, he does serve an important role to the community. For Viejo is fine with euthanizing any suffering animal for far cheaper than the vet can provide, since it gives him an opportunity to size up and point out a few key things about life to the owner of the unfortunate animal. But a woman that admires him and a man who rolls with some unsavory people are now intertwined in his simple existence and their arrival, will change his life forever…

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​So, let’s start off with a fair warning when it comes to this film, it features some unsettling scenes involving animals and violence and I want to get that out in the open right now, because I know that’s a red flag/deal breaker for some folks and I don’t ever want to misrepresent a film or put someone in an uncomfortable place by not pointing out something as important as that. But, with all that aside, while that is disturbing in its own right, and it definitely unsettled this viewer, I was able to look past that to see why a film would make something such as that an important part of its plot and that’s simply due to the fact that this is a story about miserable and ugly people.
 
Which quite frankly, I found fascinating. Because normally, characters in film have some kind of redeeming qualities or they’re on a road to redemption, but that’s simply not the case here. It’s bad people all around, who are desperate to find something good to hold onto in this world and well, there’s a morbid curiosity surrounding them and that’s why I was unable to turn away. I was quite curious as to whether or not they would turn their darkness around or find what they were looking for and by sticking with the sour air surrounding this story, I was able to see that this movie is in essence, an exploration on how anger and sorrow can turn us into bitter people who demand more ugly from the world in order to give us a sense of justice.
 
Much of that is of course accomplished by way of Viejo’s story and actions, and his downward spiral in this tale is both fascinating and heartbreaking when he is robbed of his ability to enjoy that aforementioned justice and well, if anything, this is just a dark character study. One that puts people who haven’t enjoyed much of anything in life squarely in the spotlight and well, that makes this film art in its own right since it’s fearless in telling its tale and while I can’t say I walked away from this motion picture with a smile on my face, it did what any good story is supposed to do, it evoked a reaction and it caught my attention. So, if by chance you’re curious on checking out this release, do so with an open mind and do your best to detach yourself from this rough slice of life, because there’s no joy to be found in this one, just the tough parts of our world we tend to forget about sometimes…

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