Pig Hunt

Horror is replete with mutant animal films and Pig Hunt ties into this as it centres on a group of friends - most ex-army - who go hunting in the woods.  Stopping in a store on the way, one asks the owner what the biggest pig in the area is and he tells him that there is a 3,000 pound black boar out there which is known as 'The Ripper'.  John and his trigger happy city friends decide to investigate and try and be the first to bring back this monster.  They move on from the store to John's uncle's cabin, near where he grew up, which has been desecrated by people writing ominous slogans such as 'Death Has Four Legs'. 
 
The next day, John and his girlfriend Brooks are rudely awakened by two of his childhood friends - john has obviously come a long way from his hillbilly roots.  The group join the hillbillies and head off into the woods to kill some swine.  As the saying nearly goes, 'There's something wrong in them there hills' and there have been glances of scantily dressed women leaving a horse which gets devoured by something, a very serious man with a kukri blade which he says is never unsheathed without drawing blood, illustrating his point by cutting his own arm and smearing the blood on their jeep.
 

When one of the group, a portly bloke, who wants to be a saucier not a hunter, heads off after his missing dog and returns having found a massive marijuana plantation, tensions rise as the hillbillies want the weed to sell and John intends to call the police as it is on his uncles land.  Someone's trigger finger gets a bit too itchy and suddenly the group from the city don't just have a giant boar to contend with, but all the locals.
 
For a film that ties in a group of hunters from the city, bloodthirsty hillbillies, hippies and a 3,000 lb boar, it's amazing that Pig Hunt manages to make any narrative sense at all, let alone interest you and be entertaining at the same time.  The themes may be a little too close to Deliverance to make it fully original, and the idea of people hunting a possibly genetically engineered giant creature has been done already in the visually arresting Brotherhood of the Wolf, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this.
 
The characters are diverse though genre staples: the tough guy from the city who can handle himself in the wild, the mouthy friend who can't shoot for s**t , the hot girlfriend, the fat outsider who's never handled a firearm and the unpredictable locals.  Into this melting pot is thrown a hippy commune and 'Hogzilla'!  Pig Hunt is stylishly directed and pretty well written - it doesn't look like the most expensive of films, but you can get away with quite a lot if you shoot in the woods and employ relatively cheap actors.
 
As low-budget horror goes, Pig Hunt is pretty effective though is low on the horror and is more like the previously mentioned Deliverance in terms of the tone - high on tension and threat and low on jumps and gore.
 
 

The Disc

 
The Picture
It may be because it was being upscaled, but Pig Hunt looked pretty damn good, with good definition in the low light scenes and effective animatronics and special effects make-up.  There is one scene where I was hoping that the actor was cutting the head off a fake pig as the effect was that good that I thought it was a real animal.  When you get to see the The Ripper, the effect is extremely convincing.
 
The Sound
The rear channels in the Dolby Digital 5.1 track are only used sparingly but there is one scene where a hillbilly wanders into an area rigged with speakers and the voice played through the system comes from all around the room, disorienting you almost as much as him.  The dialogue is nice and clear and the score keeps the tension high.
 
Final Thoughts
I was expecting Pig Hunt to be extremely cheesy as director James Isaac isn't the most accomplished or nuanced of filmmakers - he is probably most well known for Jason X which is utterly stupid but good fun.  He shows here that his has learnt a bit about characterisation but I would struggle to name anyone other than John and Brooks after the end credits.  This is perhaps worth a watch if you like horror films low on gore and reasonably unchallenging but it isn't the best film I've seen in recent weeks and the only extra feature is a trailer so a rental is probably the way to go.  The trailer is basically the film in three minutes so perhaps give that a look to see if it piques your interest.