In the tradition of such "found footage" movies as Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project, and owing a particular debt to the 1992 Belgian cult film Man Bites Dog, Long Pigs makes itself out to be documentary footage shot by two naive filmmakers as they followed around a real-life serial killer and cannibal (the title refers to a slang term for human meat). Writer-directors Nathan Hynes and Chris Power play themselves, tagging along with friendly murderer and gourmet cook Anthony (Anthony Alviano) as he kills, butchers, and eats a variety of people. The movie is pitched sometimes uneasily between dark comedy and disturbing horror, and even at less than 80 minutes it wears out its conceit pretty quickly. But Alviano's excellent performance and a few chillingly impressive sequences make Pigs worth a look for horror fans or anyone seeking a different approach to the serial-killer genre.
Anthony even refers at one point to the fact that people expect more "Hannibal Lecter types" from serial killers, and Alviano brings something refreshingly new to a tired movie stereotype. Anthony comes off as such a normal, sweet guy most of the time that the periodic glimpses into the darkness of his soul are that much more chilling. In the film's most disturbing and dramatically effective sequence, Hynes and Power take Anthony to meet with the father of a little girl he killed, under the pretense that they're all part of the crew of a TV show about missing children. As the father bravely insists that his daughter will be found alive, the camera moves slightly to show Anthony, holding a boom mic and giving a perfect look of disgust and malevolence.
Other scenes don't work quite as well, and the more the movie follows typical thriller storylines, the less interesting it is. Still, Alviano is always fascinating to watch, bringing a blend of everyday obnoxiousness and deep amorality to the character of Anthony, who's just as convincing as a chubby whiner who loses his temper while playing in his pick-up hockey league as he is hacking prostitutes to bits and cooking up their remains in a stew. Other characters drift in and out with little impact, and Hynes and Power don't gain much by cutting to interviews with a detective searching for the missing girl, a serial-killer expert spouting platitudes from other movies, and some sort of sanctimonious shock-radio DJ shot in extreme close-up.
Even when the movie seems to be meandering off into tedium, though, the filmmakers drop in an impressively gruesome bit of violence, none more striking than a bravura time-lapse sequence featuring Anthony completely stripping and dressing the corpse of one of his victims, then packaging up the meat for safekeeping and demonstrating how to dispose of human bones. The practical effects in the film, created by veteran effects artist Chris Bridges, are nothing short of astonishing, and go a long way toward selling the realism of the mockumentary format.
That format is limiting, certainly, and by the end of the movie it has been thoroughly exhausted. Unlike Man Bites Dog, which was a cynical, artistically ambitious satire, Pigs doesn't seem to aspire to much more than creeping its audience out, and it does maintain a better internal consistency than another similar movie, 2006's Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which took a mockumentary approach to the slasher genre. Not every detail is convincing, but the overall effect will definitely make you think twice the next time you approach the meat counter.
Anthony even refers at one point to the fact that people expect more "Hannibal Lecter types" from serial killers, and Alviano brings something refreshingly new to a tired movie stereotype. Anthony comes off as such a normal, sweet guy most of the time that the periodic glimpses into the darkness of his soul are that much more chilling. In the film's most disturbing and dramatically effective sequence, Hynes and Power take Anthony to meet with the father of a little girl he killed, under the pretense that they're all part of the crew of a TV show about missing children. As the father bravely insists that his daughter will be found alive, the camera moves slightly to show Anthony, holding a boom mic and giving a perfect look of disgust and malevolence.
Other scenes don't work quite as well, and the more the movie follows typical thriller storylines, the less interesting it is. Still, Alviano is always fascinating to watch, bringing a blend of everyday obnoxiousness and deep amorality to the character of Anthony, who's just as convincing as a chubby whiner who loses his temper while playing in his pick-up hockey league as he is hacking prostitutes to bits and cooking up their remains in a stew. Other characters drift in and out with little impact, and Hynes and Power don't gain much by cutting to interviews with a detective searching for the missing girl, a serial-killer expert spouting platitudes from other movies, and some sort of sanctimonious shock-radio DJ shot in extreme close-up.
Even when the movie seems to be meandering off into tedium, though, the filmmakers drop in an impressively gruesome bit of violence, none more striking than a bravura time-lapse sequence featuring Anthony completely stripping and dressing the corpse of one of his victims, then packaging up the meat for safekeeping and demonstrating how to dispose of human bones. The practical effects in the film, created by veteran effects artist Chris Bridges, are nothing short of astonishing, and go a long way toward selling the realism of the mockumentary format.
That format is limiting, certainly, and by the end of the movie it has been thoroughly exhausted. Unlike Man Bites Dog, which was a cynical, artistically ambitious satire, Pigs doesn't seem to aspire to much more than creeping its audience out, and it does maintain a better internal consistency than another similar movie, 2006's Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which took a mockumentary approach to the slasher genre. Not every detail is convincing, but the overall effect will definitely make you think twice the next time you approach the meat counter.
