A little while back, I reviewed two films by Australian director Chris Sun, which I greatly enjoyed (see Charlie’s Farm and Daddy’s Little Girl). After a bit of reading on the internet, I learned of his next film about a mammoth of a pig, aptly titled Boar. Quickly getting excited, I just couldn’t wait for the film to be finished, so to keep my appetite for destruction at bay, I found another murderous swine flick to enjoy — James Isaac’s Pig Hunt.
John Hickman (Travis Aaron Wade), his girlfriend, and a couple of his former-marine comrades are going on a weekend hunting trip at his uncle’s property, which he hasn’t visited in years. Upon their arrival, a couple of John’s old backwoods buddies decide to join in on the good old pig hunt. While the group isn’t thrilled about it, they decide to let the country boys tag along anyway. This proves to be a big mistake, as the true intentions of the duo is quickly realized — they are only in it to score their fair share of bud from the huge marijuana supply growing on Uncle Hickman’s property. Things turn south real quick and now John and his friends have to not only fend off a monster pig, but also defend against a vengeful clan of blood-thirsty hunters and an odd group of sacrificial hippies.
After the first 15 minutes of Pig Hunt, I was feeling pretty annoyed. The characters seemed pretty idiotic and I already knew who I was going to hate and who I would be indifferent to. Luckily, however, this annoyance soon subsided; The film took a turn for the best and I found myself not caring so much about how moronic the oh-so-tough Ben (Howard Johnson Jr.) really was. I was able to enjoy the rest of the characters’ development and get pretty involved in the story unfolding before me.
Pig Hunt is not your typical horror film; In a genre that has seen everything, it is pretty damn refreshing to witness some inventiveness from time to time. The strange but distinctive sounds of Les Claypool’s bass-lines are a complete departure from horror’s typical soundtrack, but helped to set the mood and give me a heads up on when something was about to go down. This odd score coupled with a whole bunch of head-scratching moments (i.e. a whole commune of seemingly random half-naked weed-smoking hippies) makes Pig Hunt stick out from most other killer animal flicks I’ve ever seen.
On the surface, James Isaac’s film is about a 3,000 pound beast who rips anything and anyone that gets in its way to shreds. There is much more going on here, however. There is some pretty amazing pig-on-human violence delivered from a beautifully designed porker, but there is also tons of human-on-human violence; brutal stuff that I had no idea I was in for. Thankfully all of the gore was executed with practical effects and zero CGI (to the best of my knowledge), making Pig Hunt‘s overall appeal skyrocket even higher.
I’m very surprised that I don’t hear any discussion about this film from the various horror outlets that I frequent. It is a very well put together film with a competent cast of performers, a good, albeit strange, script, and beautiful creature and blood effects. If you like killer animal movies or anything with tons of blood, give Pig Hunt a try!
I give this one 3.5 ‘California Hooks’ out of 5.
