Academy Award-winner director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview With the Vampire) probes deep inside the damaged emotional psyche of a child, where fantasy desperately strives to block out a brutal and depraved reality. But what happens when a small boy's most outlandish dreams of revenge are passionately realized as The Butcher Boy? Ireland, 1962. In a remote village, 12-year-old Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens) escapes his alcoholic father, Benny (Stephen Rea--The Crying Game), and mentally unstable mother, Annie (Aisling O'Sullivan--Michael Collins), by retreating into a haze of daydreams, relying on his "blood brother" Joe (Alan Boyle) as his sole link to the outside world. But when tragedy strikes, Francie slips deeper into surreal inhuman misery.