Pig

As you will read in many other reviews here, the fact that the film is filmed in one continuous shot is very impressive, and Adam Mason should be applauded for this fact alone. The fact that he was able to get the film to run smoothly and all the special effects still worked is a marvel. However, that's where my appreciation ends. You see, Pig is an incredibly dull and boring film. It was marketed as being this incredibly disturbing and filthy movie with sadistic violence and deplorable scenes throughout. What we get is a whole lot of sub par acting, particularly that of the female antagonist in the movie. The film's portrayal of her being mentally disabled is extremely over the top, annoying, and frankly an offensive portrayal. The hur-dur dialogue and sounds that come out of her mouth are absolutely insufferable. The male antagonist is better, but it's like comparing excrement to expired food. One is clearly better but both are pretty awful. His performance is over the top, and not in a fun way. More of an embarrassingly amateurish way. The film is also an absolute bore, with there not being much of a plot at all outside of the 2 antagonists torturing a few people mentally in physically. Don't get me wrong either, I am a fan of movies such as the Guinea Pig franchise and other extreme cinema but here it is just dull. Nothing you see on screen isn't something you haven't seen before in countless other extreme horror films, or even many mainstream horror films. By nature, the fact that the film is shot in one take means that there are going to be some scenes where the actors do things that allow the special effects or set pieces to be set up while they talk or do something in the forefront. However, as I said before the acting is atrocious so really the only draw for the movie is the torturous acts commuted. And those aren't interesting either. So what we're left with is a movie that was shot in a cool way, but what is happening on screen is mediocre at best and unbearably annoying at its worst. A real shame.

This has more or less the exact same "plot" and has the exact same title as PIG (from 1998) made by Rozz Williams (former singer of Christian Death) and Nico B. ...Sooo...wouldn't this count as plagiarism?? Yeah I can understand this movie having the same title as you can't really copyright a one word title, but for having more or less the same plot ASWELL as having the same title....?? Surely that seems a bit "too much of a coincidence"...No? Did the creator of this movie really hope that no one would take notice?? Well too bad for them because I sure DID take noticed! Horrible! Get your OWN ideas instead of stealing others!

I'm not going to go into elaborate detail about the quality or goings-on of the story, because Adam Mason's press release warned/boasted that the film contained no plot...only brutality, gore & degradation. And it certainly lived up to that. As far as as a review is concerned, I agree completely with pretty much everything Shawn Savage said in his review.

I was pretty bored throughout the proceedings, especially after I noticed the first edit in the supposedly uninterrupted, single-take film. It occurred approx 20 min. into the film...the camera moves in on the truck-bed girl's dress, there's a dissolve (read: cut), and the camera pulls back to continue capturing the goings-on. Not that what Adam Mason & co. pulled off in long takes wasn't sometimes impressive, but if you're going to boast a 70+ minute, uninterrupted take, don't cheat. My opinion is if they decided to allow themselves "hidden" cuts (a la Hitchock's ROPE), they might as well have put some effort into some semblance of a storyline to make the whole thing a bit less monotonous.

I probably would have only given this 2 stars, but the film's score was really quite engaging and well-done throughout, and that's primarily what kept me watching.

A hypnotic headmashing experiment in single camera nastiness, PIG certainly lived up to and also confounded my expectations. I was expecting a standard redneck slasher film, which in essence it is, but the totally unhinged performances and the atmosphere of inescapable dread really hooked me in, and made me feel I needed a shower after it was over. Extremely technically impressive, almost completely improvised, and bringing to mind other experimental fare like the August Underground series, PIG is practically a video diary of murder, degradation, and crack-smoking madness. As unsettlingly brilliant as Andrew Howard's performance is, a few moments of pitch-black humour dot the proceedings, adding an interesting edge to an otherwise fairly archetypal character. The music can get slightly tiresome, I'd have liked to see it with no score at all except the radio excerpts. It's certainly a slog, but an admirable and affecting one.

PIG is not a movie you're likely to put on for the family after a big Christmas lunch, but as an exercise in unrelenting brutality it's certainly worth checking out for any fan of extreme cinema.

Even at only a little longer than an hour PIG seems a bit too padded. If this was a 60-minute MASTERS OF HORROR episode it would have easily been the best one, but a certain numbness sets in to the viewer around 45-minutes in after such a protracted exhibition of frenzy, brutality and madness.

Technically the film's much-ballyhooed 'single take' technique is certainly daring. And the performances are committed, if not always entirely successful in some instances.

All-in-all this isn't a perfect film. But Adam Mason and his team have gone and done a left-of-field experiment in grueling extremity. And for a vast majority of its run time it most certainly succeeds.