Pig

I really, really did try to like this movie. I really wanted to enjoy this as sheer brutality, something that simply tried to be as vulgar as rating systems would allow. There's just. No. Plot. It's just a bad movie, plain and simple. Sure, it's got all the earmarks of a pretty, technically well-made film, but if you don't have that kind of film school background, it's nothing but torture porn, and within the first 5 minutes, you realize that it's not even torture porn: just sexist, reprehensible and filth. I'm fine with a good bit of Saw or Devil's Rejects fun, but when you're just beating the sh*t out of women for a good hour and a half, it's not fun anymore.

What a damn shame.

Adam Mason's "Pig" premiered free to all tonight, on bloody-disgusting, dreadcentral, and Twitchfilm. Mason was responsible for the mind-f*ck of a film "The Devil's Chair." as well as "Blood River." To call this a film would be liberal usage of the word. It's more of an experiment in the technical side of film making. There is no narrative, no character development, and honestly no purpose to the film. The bulk of the movie(70 minutes) was filmed in one take. If you explain this to the average movie goer, not only will they not care, but they most likely won't even know what you're talking about.

Now that I've explained that this isn't really a movie, but more of a talent showcase, let's delve into what worked for me. Knowing I was viewing one continuous take blew my mind for most of the film. The cinematography is nothing short of amazing after consuming that fact. Even more impressive is how they allow for F/X gags to be set up while the camera is running. A quick re-frame of the shot, allows for the off-screen crew to quickly set up the special effects. Some of the tricks used here were absolutely brilliant. Setting the kill in the bed of a pick-up truck, allows for them to make a quick cut to a wide-shot, while someone crawls on their belly, setting up the effects for the kill.

This isn't a movie to be enjoyed. In fact, I wouldn't recommend viewing this film to anyone unless they are not only an aspiring film maker, but interested in film making as an art form. It's hard to watch, and not because of the subject matter. While our main character prepares his "meal" the camera lingers on him, with his captive struggling in the background. This goes on for what seems like forever. A lot of the time, it made me feel like I was stoned. I knew something should be going on on the screen, but I felt so disoriented that I couldn't tell if I was missing something, or if that was just the way the movie made me feel. The acting is decent, considering there's not much coherent dialog, and that this is mostly happening in real time. The setting is believable, all-be-it a little bland. The music gets a tad annoying, with the same song being played in the back ground over and over.

If you're interested in becoming a film maker, and marvel at the technical aspects of a film, you may want to endure this experiment. You'll definitely be in for something original. But please, don't go into the flick expecting an enjoyable movie, because aside from marveling at the talent behind the camera, there's nothing to like here. Watch if you dare, and remember you've been warned.

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So...usually, before I get into what I liked and didn't like about a movie when I review it, I usually give a plot summary to show others what it's about. But, in this case, I cant give one because, frankly, there IS no plot

Now, I have good news and bad news about this film. The good news is that this film goes above and beyond the normal setting for films going "too far". The bad news? There's not much else to this film.

A thing that I have to praise this film for is it's one on-going shot that's used for almost the entire film. If you want to become a director, cinematographer, or pretty much anything else to do with film, you should see this film purely on that.

But, the major down-side to this film is that it's just plain boring at times. I'm not one of these conservative people who will hate this film because "It's too terrible" or "It will corrupt the kids" or anything like that. I mainly don't like it that much because it's just plain boring at times. Your waiting for the film to move on at points, but it never really does.

Maybe that was the director's intentions or the actors intentions (because you can tell that this film is mainly improv), but whatever it is, it's not something that you should really see OTHER than the technical stand-point.

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.