LONG PIGS

With its premise of investigating the life of a self-professed cannibal killer, Long Pigs makes a reasonable stab at the tricky 'mockumentary' genre of film which seems to be gaining in popularity in recent years. Two amateur filmmakers - Chris and Nathan - have made a fly-on-the-wall documentary, following otherwise-regular-guy Anthony as he kidnaps, kills and cooks his victims. As they become more and more implicated in Anthony's crimes, however, their roles shift from being impartial outsiders to criminals themselves - complicit in Anthony's murders and even content to try 'the other white meat'.

If all of that sounds rather akin to seminal mid-nineties shocker Man Bites Dog, then, therein lies the film's greatest flaw. It was next to impossible, for me, to avoid making comparisons between the two. Whilst Man Bites Dog can probably be credited with establishing the mockumentary format as an option for later genre filmmakers and can therefore often be glimpsed in the films which succeed it, Long Pigs borrows rather more heavily from it than that, both thematically and stylistically - a Man Bites Man, if you will.

That said, where it strikes out on its own, the film is nicely-handled. The opening scenes of the film - where Anthony trusses up the body of a woman whilst explaining his butchery procedures - are very punchy indeed, not to mention grisly. A definite strength of the film is that, when Anthony discusses the correct techniques for slaughter, this is all based in fact. For instance he accurately explains that his victims have to die quickly to avoid their meat becoming tainted by adrenaline, and the rather gruesome scene where he 'ties off' a victim's back passage to stop them evacuating their bowels into what will later be his steak tartare is similarly an established slaughterhouse procedure! If you're a squeamish meat-eater, be warned…this film will not spare your sensibilities.

Spliced with the fly-on-the-wall footage are the familiar 'expert opinions' which form part of many films and programmes in this day and age - here, from a psychiatrist and a cop. There are also several scenes where a sardonic radio jockey called Tony Prince holds forth on the topic of the film, thereby providing an additional framing device (though at times during the film it felt like there were rather too many bit-players clamouring for attention). Alongside all of the gorier scenes, there's a great deal of everyday conversation too, and where this gives way to humorous touches in the script I feel this worked very well, providing some much-needed breathing space from the main drive of the action. Long Pigs also makes some good use of special effects, and some imaginative camerawork really does help to disguise the fact that the film was no doubt made on a budget. Simply by speeding up one evisceration scene, they are able to make a convincing and gory illusion work effectively. However, for all of its strengths, Long Pigs does make mistakes along the way, and some of its scenes are rather mismanaged. The handing of a scene where Anthony visits his Alzheimer's-suffering mother is an example of that, being a clumsy depiction of the illness and not one which I found believable. Due to scenes like this, the film does stall in places.

So, it feels somewhat derivative in some aspects, but Long Pigs certainly has much to recommend it. It is ambitious in terms of its visual effects and the characters it uses, and boasts some competent performances, even where some scenes are definitely handled more successfully than others. This is a watchable mockumentary film with enough humour to offset the grisliness of the topic.

Review by Keri O'Shea