Pig

This is a surreal and avant-garde short film that pushes the boundaries of experimental cinema to the point of absurdity. With its dark visuals and disturbing atmosphere, this work challenges the viewer from the very beginning. You can't imagine how much my face changed when the needle scene started. I literally began to feel a completely different emotion, as if I had turned on a different movie.

Although at first the shock effect works without fail, the movie soon falls into excessive "edginess". The abundance of occult symbols, BDSM aesthetics and provocative elements seems excessive and even self-ironic. Nevertheless, the heavy atmosphere and creative visual style keep the attention.

Its eerie, almost hypnotic quality guarantees an unforgettable experience, but I don't think the movie is as good as it could be. I tried to find a plot in it, for example, in the scene of a conversation using sign language, which is dubbed in Russian, but it turned out to be just a set of "scary phrases" with no meaning behind them.

7/10 - unusual, but not perfect.

I found this thing by accident, i saw it was only 20 minutes and gave it a try. I can tell you, this movie is extremely tame compared to movies that even came before it. There really isn't anything super gross in this movie if we are being honest.

Some of the lets call them gore shoots look good and realistic i'll give them that positive. Everything else no. There's zero plot, zero reason to care, there is zero vocals, this whole movie felt like a waist of time. I felt like i was watching Begotten again, that's what this movie hits, and that's not a good thing.

There really isn't any structure or plot in all of this, even the sound is super muffled. There's a scene where these masked people are speaking i am going to blindly assume Russian, and there is no subtitles to understand what is being said.

Also i cant even speak about the plot, because there is literally zero, but i mean zero plot to all of this. It's just some person torturing another person in weird bizzare ways, that's pretty much it. Except it's muffled with random shots of a Nazistic book that serves no purpose.

There is no reason for you to go out and watch this thing. There are way more disgusting movies out there that came way before this thing did like Guinea Pig or Men Behind the Sun or Cannibal Holocaust, all of the movies i just listed tower over this movie both effect wise, plot wise, gore wise, everything is better then this.

2 stars for the effects, everything else sucks. This movie felt like it was 40+ minutes not 20 minutes.

Pig (1998)

*** (out of 4)

Visually and musically impressive short that's certainly not going to be everyone's taste. We basically have a serial killer in a pig's mask taking a male victim back to a house in the desert to torture him. At just 20 minutes this film has quite a bit going for it but there's no question that the highlight is the visuals by co-directors Nico B. and Rozz Williams. Williams had an interesting history and actually killed himself before the release of this film and that too has an eerie shadow over the film. As far as the film goes, as I said it's certainly not going to be for everyone as it's extremely bizarre and features real violence that many will find disturbing. There's a sequence where a needle is stuck through the man's nipple and there's also a lot of full frontal shots where the penis is being violated to say the least. The B&W image really looks like an old beat up movie from the 1920s and there's no question that's there a certain dark mood and atmosphere hanging over the picture. Those willing to stomach the storyline are going to be in for a rather unique vision.

The 'woman' as mentioned in the previous comment is not a woman. The actor in the pig mask with the long black hair is Rozz Williams. He was the original singer for Christian Death. This is a creative short shot in BW super 8. Given that Rozz produced this, I would have liked to hear a bit more original music. I can see how Bruce LaBruce may have gotten some of his pig mask ideas for photo shoots from this film. The sign language and backwards vocals are very Lynchian. The instructional book Rozz refers to is probably the most impressive thing in this short. Although Rozz died in 1998, and this short seems to have come out in 1999 I can only assume it was released posthumously. Perhaps it was just a creative venture for his private collection.

"Pig" is a very surreal little movie directed by two weirdos who seem to have been willing to do ANYTHING to themselves for the sake of their odd art. Seriously, there are some f*cked up visuals in here that do NOT look faked, and they managed to make even Me squirm uncomfortably in my seat, and I hardly ever wince during a "shock" production like this. But, seeing a sewing needle going through a man's nipple and, even worse, his penis was no doubt really unnerving and gross to watch.

My main issue with the film is how hard it tries to be *EDGY*. In some ways, this can be effective, but there comes a point in which it's simply too over the top and obvious. There are skulls and occult-ish imagery and sadomasochistic bdsm and plenty of swastikas all throughout this painful twenty minutes, and, after the initial shock, it gets quite silly.

Despite this, I enjoyed "Pig" overall. The atmosphere was very heavy and the visual style was often creative and oddly mesmerizing. There is no real plot, as this is an experimental film, but, in the end, it is much more linear than, say, a Stan Brakhage film, and this makes it work even more. The microscopic and cryptic semblance of plot it does contain is disturbing and wild enough to pull together a decently evocative short horror film that has the power to disturb and interest, no matter how obvious the silly, emo- teenage-boy-esque *EDGINESS* can get.