Piggy

Not everything works (the 2nd act is a bit too long, some characters' decisions are a bit questionable too), but this is really well done.

The first act is as uncomfortable as necessary and the most engaging part of the film IMO. Without it, you wouldn't get the motivations, the internal doubts, and the grey areas of our main character.

Even if it drags a bit in the middle, the third act is strong and the finale delivers. After being seen for the first time, everything changes, and now even her calls for help are heard.

Great performance by Claudia Salas and confident direction by Carlota Pereda.

Cerdita, aka Piggy, A Spanish movie from 2022.

Sara is an overweight teenage girl, who faces bullying from a group of teenage girls, the so called crowd. After a bullying incident, Sara sees her bullies in trouble, she has a choice to make.

It's another cracker from Spain, Piggy is a wonderfully timed horror thriller, it's bleak, it's thought provoking, it's very relevant.

The interest of course lays right at Sara's feet, after suffering for what would have been a teen's worst nightmare, she witnesses a horrifying event, putting yourself in Sara's place, is she glad her tormenter is in trouble, or guilty for not doing something.

Laura Galan is excellent from start to finish, a competent and capable performance. You see how cruel life can be for a teen that's different, in her case overweight, you see how cruel a group can be, it's very well observed.

The horror, bullying and gore are all measured, nothing is overdone, they could have easily made this into a gore fest, or gone too far, but they didn't.

That ending, I won't be forgetting that in a hurry.

8/10.

"Piggy" is an interesting flick that could have been better. It's the kind of movie where you wish a different, more capable filmmaker had been given the job of making a movie with the same themes. It evokes real-life issues but doesn't really say much about them. In that regard it is almost annoying.

Sara is an overweight girl living in small-town Spain where she is bullied by girls who nicknamed her Piggy. One day she decides to go to the pool, where she encounters her bullies. They harass her with horrible verbal humiliation, and then even attempt to drown her.

Sara later sees that the girls have been kidnapped, seeing them taken away in a van. She ignores their pleas for help and decides not to tell anyone what happened.

Sara, the titular "Piggy", is a rare survivor of bullying who gets the opportunity to take revenge. She was entirely at the mercy of her bullies, but they end up in an even more precarious position in front of her.

One problem with the movie is that we never really feel for Sara, despite seeing the nightmare the other girls put her through. The movie depicts her at an odd distance, seemingly assigning us the role of bully too. Bullies don't see the real person, they just see whatever the dislike about themselves, and go after it. We never really see Sara as a real person either.

It feels like the movie raises genuinely timely issues but doesn't really do anything with them. It's also never really convincing. The filmmakers needed to engage us on the character level, to put us in Sara's world. But hardly any of them seem to know how to do that.

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"PIGGY is the right type of film to be one of the last movies in an event such as the Sundance Film Festival. Carlota Pereda takes advantage of the terrific lead performance from Laura Galán, and delivers a shocking, violent, frighteningly grounded story about bullying, fat-shaming, and self-acceptance.

Despite taking a more revenge-driven approach, the filmmaker beautifully develops the moral concepts at hand. The romantic subplot doesn't really work, though, and the film would have benefited from a stronger atmosphere. In addition to this, just a couple of impactful dialogues surrounding the main themes would have drastically improved the overall piece.

Still, it's definitely a must-watch."

Rating: B+

I had to watch it dubbed in English but expected the dub to be good like any other english dubbed film out today, that was not the case for this film. The English dub is possibly the worst I've ever heard in any film. The people they chose to do the voices were awful and turned a drama into a kid's comedy. Seriously it felt like I was watching a straight up comedy film because the voices were so ridiculously over the top and awful as they didn't match the ages of the characters and it was not natural sounding. They used a grown woman for a little boy's voice and a young woman for the older woman playing the mother. Absolutely could not get past that at all. Made what should have been a serious drama into a joke. You could have hired anyone else and it would have been better than this. Aside from that, the film itself was decent. The acting from all was fairly realistic and I think it was an interesting take on bullying with a twist.