PIG

PIG

A woman staggers dazed across a lonely highway. She's covered in dried blood and sweating beneath the American desert's intense heat. Upon surveying the barren horizon behind her, she spies a truck coming into view and heading in her direction. The woman panics and attempts to flee. But all energy has gone - she halts and resigns herself to the punishment that will follow.

A man, who we shall call Daddy (Andrew Howard) because that is how he likes to be known, emerges from the truck. He's also caked in gore. Daddy comforts the sobbing filly before losing his temper and throwing her to the asphalt, where he repeatedly head-butts her.

It's a direct, intense opening that will leave you shocked and perhaps fearful of what's still to come. This is Adam Mason's PIG.

From there, the film never lets up. Ever.

Told almost completely in real-time, the action continues unabated as Daddy heaves the unconscious woman onto the back of his truck and returns to his remote trailer. Imagine Divine's residence in PINK FLAMINGOS - only with no neighbours, visitors or even passers-by. Nope, not even the Eggman calls in.

Here, Daddy strangles the woman to quell her screams and then unloads her onto a wooden bench outdoors while another female victim squats cowering on the grass behind him. As if watching her friend being asphyxiated wasn't enough, the survivor then observes as Daddy slashes the dead girl's throat open (drinking the blood from the wound at one point) and disembowels her.

By this point, you may be asking what the plot of PIG is. There isn't one as such. Remember how Mason's earlier, celebrated BROKEN offered a miniscule of exposition before plunging the viewer into Hell? PIG does much the same, only this time there is no exposition whatsoever.

Events do progress, however. Daddy introduces his pregnant friend to his latest kidnapee. We shall call this demented mum-to-be Sweetheart, because that is how he likes her to be known. Sweetheart is, it would appear, a former captive who has succumbed to Daddy's "conditioning" by way of relentless verbal and physical abuse.

The childlike lunacy of Sweetheart confirms that her mind is no longer her own. She has been programmed to heed to Daddy's wants. This is the first indication the viewer gets of what motivates Daddy. As his name suggests, he is desperate to mould a family unit over which he can dominate and command unconditional respect.

As Daddy tells the surviving female, his taunting and humiliation - not to mention vicious beatings - are "all a part of the plan". A plan that is illustrated more clearly when he presents the woman's male lover, also being held against his will in a nearby field, and refers to him as the victim's "brother".

Coupled with the incessant strains of talk radio and TV mantra on the soundtrack, Daddy's obsession with modern American culture and the lie of the apple pie-eating all-American family nucleus that comes with it offers a wry and enjoyably raw assault against a once-invincible nation's eternal reliance on its two most questionable comfort blankets.

The churning narration of Daddy's media influences echoes the disembodied noises that fill Peter's skull in Lodge Kerrigan's CLEAN, SHAVEN. But whereas Kerrigan utilised disturbing audio to highlight his protagonist's confused state of mind, here Mason mounts it on to amplify an atmosphere of hysteria: Daddy is not a pensive schizophrenic like Peter's anti-hero; he's a redneck psychopath more in tune with the Firefly family from THE DEVIL'S REJECTS.

Or so we believe. The yearning to oversee a family looms heavily over the theme, right through to a later scene of attempted rape that implies Daddy's inability to consummate. But then, the unexpected finale forces you to re-evaluate everything you've just seen and brings to the surface far more possible themes to discuss. But not here, as it would be impossible to do so without creating major spoilers.

Howard deserves credit for a brave performance that sees him dancing, dragging up, screaming abuse at terrified women, stripping off, doling out savage beatings and much more. He really pushes the boundaries in terms of on-screen craziness here, upping the ante several notches further than where he went with Mason's BLOOD RIVER.

But the real acting kudos belong to the victims (whose names were unavailable on this early screener). They give portrayals of fear and pain so raw that their burden becomes positively palpable. And consequently, of course, extremely uncomfortable to watch.

What sounds like stock library music is employed effectively for the most part, lending a sorrow to some scenes while attempting to elicit tension in others.

Filming on a tight schedule with minimal cast and resources (Mason and Howard basically went out and filmed this over a spare weekend, I believe), Mason has undoubtedly achieved what I guess he set out to make: a gruelling and unapologetic exercise in human cruelty. Or, a horror film, if you will. With convincing performances, professional camerawork and some attractive sun-kissed exteriors to boot.

But whereas it could be argued that the film is a savage indictment against the hypocrisy of the American dream (for the most part), or that it is as pure a horror film as you could imagine, there is a potential problem with this latter point. There will be those who dismiss this as torture porn.

On paper, it certainly sounds like a pointless 94-minute wallow in nastiness (at one point, for example, Daddy chews on a victim's brains before spitting them into the face of another; the frequency in which victims suffer head-butts and punches to their faces is alarming). The cynics will leap on the lack of conventional storyline, even though this is perhaps equal parts dynamic ploy and economic necessity. Either way, the brutality commences from the opening frame and never ceases, so accusations of "torture porn" are sadly bound to fly.

To this end, PIG did remind me at times of Eric Stanze's SCRAPBOOK (the establishing scenes, certainly) and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (the fucked up family set-up). And the violence does become histrionic at times, to the point where its impact has dulled by the time we reach the film's halfway mark.

However, the lack of a traditional "three act" structure allows for some boldly long takes which show remarkable skill from Mason and his cast as they make the execution of some deceptively elaborate action look simple. It's even visually stylish on many occasions.

But this same lack of convention also affords for some indulgence where tighter editing and less actors' improvisations wouldn't have gone amiss. Another potential drawback for some will be that the lack of structure results in there being no sense of escalation: without the hook of central characters to care for, a lot of this boils down to how riveting you find Howard's portrayal of insanity. Thankfully, he's very adept at it. But perhaps not enough to stop the pace from flagging a little during the mid-section.

But then, you have to remember that the film was made in a largely ad-hoc manner: this is the cinema of instinct.

PIG is well made and commendably uncompromising. It is in many ways exhilarating to find a talented and intelligent filmmaker who's prepared to push for such harsh content in their films. This is not as satisfying as BROKEN or BLOOD RIVER, but then it doesn't benefit from having their forward planning, filming schedules, budgets or traditionally plotted scripts.

It does, however, benefit from a superlative cast and a director who can deliver something utterly harrowing out of the simplest scenarios.

Review by Stu Willis


 
Directed by Adam Mason
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