HorrorGhouls – Horror Ghouls

Last Shift (2014)

Posted on July 26, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Jessica Loren is a rookie police officer, ready to take on her first assignment: taking the last shift at an abandoned police station that will soon be closed down for good. For some reason she doesn’t quite understand, her mother calls her and pleads with her to not take the job. She believes it must be because her father was killed on duty many years ago. Anyway, Jessica ignores her mother and leaves for duty. The commanding officer at the police station gives her a quick tour, and tells her that a Hazmat team will come around sometime later in order to collect evidence that is difficult to expose of. For this reason, she’s ordered to never leave her post. Sounds like a pretty easy task for a rookie, right? Nothing bad could happen here…right? Well, what sounds like a dull job, soon proves to be anything but as Jessica soon finds herself in stranger and stranger situations. The first incident is when a hobo enters the place and acts all weird, but it gets more disturbing when she receives a series of distress calls from a woman named Monica, who claims that she’s been taken hostage by a cult and believes they’re going to kill her. The thing is: no emergency calls are supposed to come into that police station anymore, as they have been rerouted to the new station. Jessica also finds out that in this exact police station the members of an infamous cult committed suicide one year ago, and she starts suspecting that the calls from Monica indicates that this cult still has some living members. Something is going on at this police station for sure, and while the place may be abandoned by people, something is definitely still there…

Last Shift is a horror film from 2014, directed by Anthony DiBlasi, written by DiBlasi and Scott Poiley. It was filmed in Sanford, Florida, in an actual abandoned police station. The script for the movie had actually not been written yet until the director and writer came upon the place. Sometimes you just need to find the right location and setting first, especially when you’re an indie filmmaker.

DiBlasi’s vision for the film was to have one that focused on atmosphere and would keep the audience wondering and intrigued by the mystery, and on this it definitely hits the sweet spot perfectly. Despite being a one-location movie, it keeps the pacing up and rarely falters. Much of the horror elements and sinister atmosphere comes from the main character’s isolation and increasingly bizarre and creepy events that keeps unfolding around her. Going from the subtle incidents at the beginning to a gradual rise in bizarre occurrences, the tension always keeps building. It’s also obvious that DiBlasi used the Manson Family as inspiration for the cult, while adding some occult and satanic elements into the mix. I guess you could define this movie as a little bit of a slow-burner, where indeed the focus on creepy atmosphere and a tingling sense of foreboding is what drives a lot of the movie forward, keeping its mystery elements in the shadows and revealing little bits and pieces along the way.

Overall, Last Shift is a creepy and effective psychological horror film with an emphasis on cults and satanism. DiBlasi also directed a remake titled Malum in 2023 where it appears the focus is a lot more on gory effects and an expansion on the cult elements.

Director: Anthony DiBlasi
Writers: Anthony DiBlasi, Scott Poiley
Country & year: USA, 2014
Actors: Juliana Harkavy, Joshua Mikel, Hank Stone, J. LaRose, Sarah Sculco, Kathryn Kilger, Natalie Victoria, Mary Lankford Poiley, Matt Doman, Lindsi Jeter, Randy Molnar
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2965466/

Anthropophagous 2000 (1999)

Posted on July 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

For those familiar with Andreas Schnaas’ epic Violent Shit saga, and just add Nikos the Impaler to the list, know pretty much what to expect: Amateur-hour overkill extravaganza all the way through. And his remake of Joe D’Amato’s Antropophagus isn’t much different. It’s Violent, it’s Shit, and lots of tasteless, inept fun.

The film starts with a group of Interpol agents who have discovered a cave with human skeletons. One of the agents spots a diary which he takes a further look into to maybe get some answers. Then we flashback to a family of four on a boat-trip: dad Nikos (not related to Nikos the Impaler) with his younger daughter and pregnant wife (UH-OH). Shit happens when they get hit by a storm which leaves them stuck on a lifeboat where Nikos goes insane and eats his whole family. Since then, he’s paddled himself to the mainland to some remote village where he’s eaten up most of the people.

Our first body counts are a young couple who are about to have sex in a tent. We’re a few minutes in where the cinematography is non-existent and the overall quality reeks of amateur homemade porn. And don’t expect it to be any better. However, Nikos is soon about to pop up where he deletes them both with an ax and rips their faces off.

We jump to a train station where we meet our main characters (or just body-counts, if you will), a group that I’d guess were some middle-aged Anonymous Alcoholics, gathering for an intervention. It’s less serious than that though, as they’re here on vacation. The place is supposed to be in the countryside of Italy, yet the only post listed on the IMDb trivia section tells us that the film was shot in Austria. Whatever.

They continue the trip with an RV where they struggle to find the destination, a town called Lorenzo (if I remember correctly). They ask a local for help, a hobo, who strongly warns them to NOT go near Lorenzo. The pregnant woman pukes straight at the hobo’s hands, which he slurps and smears over his face. Uh.. OK.

It’s pretty straight-forward from here on with the same plot points as the original. The pregnant woman mysteriously disappears (and we all know what lies next for her), the body counts enter an empty village where they stumble upon (what is supposed to be) cadavers. Don’t let the cheap Halloween props fool you. This is the real thing. They get spooked and surprised by a blind screaming lady in a basement. The classic fetus scene is of course here, and instead of using a skinned rabbit, we actually have a real baby. Just kidding, they used an animatronic baby doll.

We also have some new fresh ideas with a quick side-plot of a gay couple hiking in the local woods, only to amp up the pace and kill count. And instead of the obligatory taking-a-piss break, we … are having a smoke. Because Andreas Schnaas tried to go for a far more serious tone with this one, if you can even imagine – and it falls completely on its face on all fronts. If the acting wasn’t bad and amateurish enough, with the same juvenile and frantic backyard-filmmaking approach as his previous films, the film is also shot on video. A fugly combination that never looks appealing. So don’t look for any visuals or atmosphere like the original.

That being said, Anthropophagous 2000 doesn’t fail to entertain. It’s a fun retarded so-bad-it’s-good trash fest that could exist in the Violent Shit universe. I said the same about Nikos the Impaler. Just replace the killer with Karl the Butcher, and there you have it. It makes zero difference. The gore is over-the-top, messy and comical, as Schnaas is known for. Some look decent while others look fake, like a plastic turd. Also watch out for a Cannibal Holocaust reference. Andreas Schnaas plays, of course, the cannibal, where he acts more like a cosplay version of George Eastman. It’s like watching a mouse trying to be an elephant. But as always, he seemed to have a jolly fun time playing yet another boogeyman.

Director: Andreas Schnaas
Writer: Karl-Heinz Geisendorf
Country & year: Austria/Germany, 1999
Actors: Oliver Sauer, Cornelia De Pablos, Andreas Stoek, Sybille Kohlhase, Achim Kohlhase, Andre Sobottka, Britt B., Andreas Schnaas
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202233/

Original:
– Antropophagus (1980)

Faux sequel:
– Anthropophagus II (2022)

Anthropophagous 2000 (1999) – Trailer from Movies From The Crypt on Vimeo.

O, GLORY! Horror Short Film

Posted on July 21, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Set in the late 70’s, a psychiatric doctor and his assistant are called to an isolated country house to examine Deborah, whose brother believes she is losing her mind.

Again it’s Horror Short Sunday, and this time we’re taking a look at O, Glory! This horror short offers up a trippy 70’s vibe, where an opinionated and conceited psychiatrist believes he can cure a mentally disturbed woman, only to have everything spiral into bizarre cosmic horror.

Director: Charlie Edwards-Moss, Joe Williams
Writer: Charlie Edwards-Moss, Joe Williams
Country & year: UK, 2022
Actors: Sam Spruell, Jonathan Livingstone, Emily Stott, Vincent Shiels, Charlie Ratcliffe
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt17274022/

Anthropophagus II (2022)

Posted on July 19, 2024July 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Anthropophagus II, my ass.

Because this has nothing to do with Joe D’Amato’s film, even though I see clearly through the cheap and ridiculously outdated selling tactic. Italians were notoriously known for spewing out cynical and half-assed unofficial “faux“ sequels to more successful films way back in the day, which most of us horror ghouls know pretty well already. This one came just four decades too late. I discovered the film while I wrote my review of the original, and I honestly expected the worst of the worst and that I’d maybe turn it off after the first thirty minutes (which is something I rarely do). And to my fat surprise, I had some fun with Anthropophagus II, because it’s so dumb it’s actually amusing.

The plot goes as follows: A group of young female students are writing a thesis on a historical air-raid shelter bunker located near Rome, Italy. To get a sense of the place and its environment, they let themselves be isolated in the bunker over a weekend. No alcohol allowed. And I thought that girls just wanted to have fun. They also have to hand over their cellphones, which I don’t believe for a second that any Gen Z would survive without for even two seconds. They would crumble and die of abstinence before starvation. Anyway – it turns out that a disfigured, tiny freak lives deep in the bunker where he has his own secret little dim-lighted torture chamber. He looks like an older, retired brother of Yellow Bastard from Sin City, just without the beer gut, and is of course not related to the cannibal from the original film. He’s moons apart from the creepy and intimidating presence we saw with George Eastman, if we really have to compare. So, what’s his deal? You’ll see.

On the surface, there’s nothing new here, just a string of tired, over-done clichés and modern TikTok characters with a half brain cell and the personality of an emoji. Nothing much to grab onto there, except some nice flesh, I guess. It’s formulaic by the textbook. The acting is flat with tone deaf dialogues written by an alien who doesn’t have a clue how humans interact. Yes, it’s one of those movies. The girls are cute, though, I’ll give ’em that. All the actors have English dubbing and some of their dialogue delivery is on Scooby-Doo level and overall so goofy that I burst out laughing several times. Lol and Lols and more emoji lols. The film is produced by Giovanni Paolucci, an old-timer veteran who’s worked on several films by Bruno Mattei and Dario Argento’s big turkey, which was Dracula 3D. So that alone should maybe say something.

The film’s strong side is the effects and the setting of the bunker which reminded me more of Creep (2004), while we have a series of fleshy Guinea Pig-inspired torture porn scenes. And this one goes hardcore on the gore, already in the opening scene where we have a baby being ripped out of a woman’s vagina. A nice quick nod to the original. The effects are impressive, and the violence is mean-spirited, brutal and callous, whereas Art the Clown would probably have smiled from ear to ear. Solid work from the splatter & gore department, in other words. So, if you’re primarily in for the bloody and messy stuff, sprinkled with some flavors of classic Italian horror aesthetic to make it taste more than a week-old frozen pepperoni pizza, you won’t be too disappointed.

Anthropophagus II is available both on DVD and Blu-ray, and also lurking on our favorite streaming site, Tubi.

Director: Dario Germani
Writer: Lorenzo De Luca
Country & year: Italy, 2022
Actors: Jessica Pizzi, Monica Carpanese, Giuditta Niccoli, Diletta Maria D’Ascanio, Chiara De Cristofaro, Shaen Barletta, Valentina Capuano, Alessandra Pellegrino, Alberto Buccolini
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13757762/

Original:
– Antropophagus (1980)

Remake:
– Anthropophagous 2000 (1999)

Antropophagus (1980)

Posted on July 16, 2024July 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

It’s summer, the sun is shining and that means: vacation time. How about traveling to an obscure, exotic Greek Island out in the middle of nowhere. We can take along our heavily pregnant friend who’s just minutes from giving birth. Yeah, that’s a great idea, because nothing bad could happen to her.

As soon as our group of friends arrives at the island, things doesn’t seem to be right. The old town nearby is eerily quiet where all the townsfolk just seem to have vanished in thin air. After some exploring, they stumble upon a rotten corpse which should be enough to take a U-turn and maybe visit Disneyland instead. Whoops, too late, cause their boat has been attacked and is adrift. The pregnant woman, who stayed on the boat, has been captured by a grunting man which we so far has only seen from his POV view. Turns out that he’s a deranged cannibal who’s eaten the whole island where the only survivor is a blind girl drenched in blood, hiding in a basement. Have a nice stay.

Antropophagus, or AntHropophagus. or AntHropophagOus, or just I Eat Your Fetus. Yum is Joe D’Amato’s filthy and notorious Eurotrash magnum opus which is most known for one particular scene (or maybe two). The odd title stems from anthropophagy, a doctor term which in English simply means cannibalism. And with that being said, the film is far from as gory as as it’ll make you to believe. We have the half-classic scene of the cannibal eating his own intestines, a severed head in a bucket, a pretty sloppy kill with a meatcleaver, and of course the film’s big selling point: the very juicy fetus scene which made the film earn its spot on the list of Video nasty, and banned in most countries. But don’t worry, the effect of the fetus was a skinned rabbit covered in blood. Poor rabbit, though.

The pacing is slow, especially in the middle-part where the film really uses its precious time to build up the atmosphere. The characters are bland and boring which makes the slow build-up seem longer than it should. A familiar face among the body-counts would be Tisa Farrow, most known from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979). This was her final acting gig before she retired from the film biz to pursue a career as a nurse. She died early this year at age 72. RIP.

The film is pretty tame compared with today’s standards, to be honest. There’s also some very bizarre circus/clown music to be heard during the first half. The film’s strong suit is the thick, raw and sticky atmosphere. George Eastman as the bulky and tall cannibal is also a big plus here, even though he walks slower than a lobotomized zombie on Zoloft. So despite its flaws and clunkiness, the film has its unique vibe and distinctiveness, maybe much thanks to the primitive surroundings and the old European buildings with the overall strong odor of death and decay everywhere. It’s also a technically solid film with some really great ghoulish sceneries – the most memorable being in a moist catacomb where the film’s crew mixed real skeletons with fake ones.

And that segways us to the IMDb’s trivia section: because according to the director, some of the heads and bones in the catacombs were plastic imitations, as mentioned. Upon collecting them after the scenes had been shot, the crew accidentally took with them some real bones. Since D’Amato did not dare to return them, he let them make a “pilgrimage” to his house. Horns up!

I’m also a sucker for that deliciously tasty movie poster, by the way, which is definitively something to have framed in your living room just to piss of your mum and dad every time they visit. That one is made by Enzo Sciotti (1944 – 2021) who also illustrated movie posters for Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, David Lynch, George A. Romero and more. Movie poster designers, and illustrators in general, get little to no credit, and with the rise of AI junk, I hope that will change. But I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, though.

Antropophagus has gotten numerous releases throughout the years, all from cut-down versions to bootlegs with even more numerous alternative titles to keep you confused. It was for the first time released in full uncut version in 2005 by Shriek Show with both Italian and English dub. The Italian version is laughably bad, so rather stick with the English one. Eastman and D’Amato followed-up with a so-called “spiritual sequel“ a year later called Absurd, which is just dull and painfully boring. The remake Anthropophagous 2000 (1999) by Andreas Schnaas is way more fun. An unofficial sequel was spat out in 2022, simply called Antropophagus II, which I hadn’t heard of until now.

Director: Joe D’Amato
Writer: George Eastman, Joe D’Amato
Country & year: Italy, 1980
Also known as: The Grim Reaper, The Savage Island, The Beast, The Zombie’s Rage, Man-Eater
Actors: Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone, Serena Grandi, Margaret Mazzantini, Mark Bodin, George Eastman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082479/

Remake:
– Anthropophagous 2000 (1999)

Faux sequel:
– Anthropophagus II (2022)

SISTER HELL – Horror Short

Posted on July 14, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A reclusive nun is tempted to leave the monastery. Her dream is to become a curvy, voluptuous woman; to become how she really feels inside. With cautious steps, she ventures towards the sinful city.

On this week’s Horror Short Sunday, we present the amusing Sister Hell, a horror short from Norway (our home country) about a nun who wants to undergo a total bimbofication surgery. When mother superior and the other servants of the lord tries to stop her and punish her for her sins, the devil himself comes to save the day and brings along his fiddle and his accordion as well! Yes, it’s exactly as weird and bizarre as it sounds. Enjoy!

Director: Fredrik S. Hana
Writer: Fredrik S. Hana
Country & year: Norway, 2015
Actors: Thomas Aske Berg, Espen Hana, Oliver Hohlbrugger, Anders Hommersand, Lene Heimlund Larsen, Johanna Knudsen Rostad, Michael Wallin
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt4921312/

Lovely, Dark and Deep (2023)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In Arvores National Park, several rangers and other people have gone missing over a span of many years. Lennon is a backcountry ranger who starts working at the place, after her predecessor became one of the missing people. Of course, Lennon also has a motive for working at this place: when she was a child, her sister Jenny disappeared there, and she hopes that maybe she will find some answers. In her ranger cabin, she also keeps track of all the people that have gone missing over the years, including her sister. Soon, there’s report of another missing person as well: Sarah Greenberg, who went missing during a hike. The rangers form a search party, but the head ranger orders Lennon to stay at base camp, an order she quickly disobeys. She starts searching for Sarah as well, and finds her bloody and disoriented. What sounds like a happy ending to what could have been another missing persons case, ends up getting Lennon fired and she is asked to await airlift out of the place in five days. Well, five days can be a long wait…and strange things start happening when Lennon then decides to take a hike through the park…

Lovely, Dark and Deep is a horror film from 2023, written and directed by Teresa Sutherland. It’s her feature debut, and stars Georgina Campbell (from Barbarian) in the leading role. The movie was filmed in Portugal, providing many great forest and landscape shots.

The feeling of total isolation comes through well during the film, where the infrequent appearance of other rangers and hikers almost come as a surprise. It is both beautiful and unnerving, where Lennon walks through the confines of the forest on a sunny day, while also feeling like the entire place is ready to swallow her up and leaving no trace. Every year, hundreds of people go missing in national parks, and many of them are never found. While it comes as no surprise that this could easily happen due to the lack of proper planning, not having proper gear, unpredictable weather, sudden illness and even wildlife, it’s still something that’s fruitful for fanciful explanations and creepy theories: from the more down-to-earth speculations like serial killers roaming these places to supernatural explanations, Bigfoot, ufo’s, you name it. And while Lovely, Dark and Deep does offer some supernatural elements, most of it is subtle enough and without any thorough explanation, which works just fine for a movie like this.

Lovely Dark and Deep is a slow-burner which focuses on mood and mystery, providing an unsettling and often dreamlike atmosphere. It’s primarily about a woman who returns to the place where a childhood trauma happened, in order to seek answers. Not only does she get isolated in the vast forest landscape, but she’s already mentally isolated by dwelling on her past terrors and conflicting feelings and self-doubt, partly blaming herself and wondering if she could she have done something to save her sister. It does take a certain turn after a while where it ventures into the supernatural and surreal, which may take some people out of it, but which I personally found enjoyable. Recommended if you want something beautiful, mysterious and atmospheric. Or something lovely, dark and deep if you will.

Writer and director: Teresa Sutherland
Country & year: Portugal/USA, 2023
Actors: Georgina Campbell, Nick Blood, Wai Ching Ho, Mick Greer, Celia Williams, Maria de Sá, Ana Sofia Martins, Ivory Lee Smith, Letícia Assunção
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15560132/

Ouija Shark 2 (2022)

Posted on July 9, 2024July 9, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

It’s Shark Week and all, and since I’ve already talked about the modern classic that is Ouija Shark four years ago, now it’s time to take a look at the sequel.

Ouija Shark 2 opens with a quick summary of the first one where Anthony (John Migliore) sacrificed himself to save his daughter from getting eaten by a ghost shark. Anthony (John Migliore again) has since gotten stuck in a cheap green-screened Hell as a twisted parody of Dr. Strange where he’s getting chased and fighting against… gorillas. Of course, what else did you expect.

Anthony’s supposedly grieving wife (played by Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith) gives an emotionless speech with some crocodile tears, standing by his gravestone and swears that she will bring him back. She visits the fortune-teller who helped Anthony crossing over to the other side, in order to whack the shark and get some answers. The crystal ball tells us what we already know: that he’s in Hell. We can’t leave him THERE. We have to SAVE him, Anthony’s wife says with the emotion of a flat google voice. It’s not gonna be easy, the fortune-teller replies. It’s gonna be a barefoot trip to the park, don’t you worry.

Because after a quick meeting with The Grim Reaper (played by a dude with some cheap white paint on his face), Anthony gets some assistance from a ghost alligator which will help him finishing the evil shark. And just out of the blue, as expected, we have a musical number here where a goofy Satan and his TikTok brides show Taylor Swift how you make a catchy song (and that was not irony). Meanwhile, in the land of the living, Anthony’s wife is in the local woods to ask the mom of the fortune-teller for help. She’s a hermit and not interested. Shove off, she says. Can’t blame her. She changes her mind, though. But who cares. Now we want some shark mayhem, as the poster teases us with.

And the poster didn’t lie. If the film wasn’t amateur-hour already, just wait for the last thirty minutes – or as Satan himself says: You’ve seen nothing yet, folks! Here we have a series of random nightly cityscape shots where the ghost shark and the gator boss fight each other. Both creatures are, just like in the first film, ultra-cheap looking cute puppets that toddlers would have in their bed, and it looks as epic and cinematic as you’d expect. The gator spits out yellow-glowing puffy CGI balls while Satan controls the shark with a ouija board as he’s laughing and having a blast. The military chimes in and fires some missiles. The shark zaps them by shooting force-lighting through its eyes. Lots of buildings get destroyed, even a nuclear power plant (!) Oh, the mayhem, carnage and destruction! Roland Emmerich would eat his heart out. Really intense stuff, in other words. We see a handful of extras who run left and right in front a black, foggy background, all of which I would bet is super proud to be a part of Ouija Shark 2. And don’t blink if you wanna catch the two-second cameo by Lloyd Kaufman.

Ouija Shark 2 is written and directed by the main protagonist himself, John Migliore. And he goes all in for a crazier tone than the first one with a script that must have been co-written by a group of eight-year olds who just made it up as they went along. While the first had a whopping budget of 300 (yes, three hundred) Canadian dollars, I’d guess this one is slightly higher (50 dollars extra maybe), which gives us a few more green screen backgrounds rather than just the local woods and the director’s backyard. The acting is, of course, a big factor here, which is as strong and solid as you’d see in an elementary school play. But the one who takes the golden raspberry here, is Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith. She’s so stiff, lifeless and ridiculously robotic that she makes Mark Zuckerberg actually look like a normal human being. That in itself quite impressive.

So, whats next for this epic franchise, we may wonder? How about Ouija Shark 3: The Harpoon Made Me Do it, just to spitball an idea.

Writer and director: John Migliore
Country & year: Canada, 2022
Actors: John Migliore, Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith, Kylie Gough, Simon Wheeldon, Lena Montecalvo, Jay MacAulay, Sabrina Migliore, Emmalene Pruden, Nicholas Migliore
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21409958/

Prequel: Ouija Shark (2020)

UNCANNY ALLEY 02: THE NIGHT SHIFT – ANIMATED HORROR SHORT

Posted on July 7, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A late-night janitor gets a strange visitor when cleaning in the swimming pool area.

For this week’s Horror Short Sunday, we take a look at the animated horror short The Night Shift, which is the second episode of the animated series Uncanny Alley shown on Adult Swim. It’s created by Rodrigo Goulão de Sousa, who is an animator based in France. The episodes are all horror themed, with surreal and often bizarre elements mixed into the creepiness. This episode starts off with a seemingly “ordinary” supernatural event: a bleeding crooked ghost walks by, leaving stains of blood all over the floor. At this point, the janitor seems more downhearted by the fact that he’s got to clean it up, rather than showing any fear over seeing an actual ghost…but then, the ghost starts gibbering some kind of nonsense and we’re suddenly thrown into a surreal, bizarre lovecraftian world of some kind. Certainly worth a watch and all the episodes are available on Adult Swim’s YouTube channel.

UNCANNY ALLEY 02: THE NIGHT SHIFT - ANIMATED HORROR SHORT

Director: Rodrigo Goulão de Sousa
Writer: Rodrigo Goulão de Sousa
Country & year: USA, 2024

Piggy (2022)

Posted on July 5, 2024July 5, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Sara is an overweight girl who gets constantly bullied by a group of other teenage girls: Maca, Roci and Claudia. One of these girls even used to be her friend. They call her Cerdita (Piggy), and she can’t get a moment of peace no matter where she goes. On a hot summer day, she decides to visit the local swimming pool, where there’s no one else except another man who leaves shortly after. The peace doesn’t last long, though, because of course the three bullies comes along and ruins everything for her and also ends up stealing her backpack and clothes. Wearing nothing but her bikini, she has to walk home and gets harassed by a group of men who makes fun of her weight. Devastated, she escapes onto a side road, where she sees a parked van. Suddenly, a bloodied Claudia appears in the window of the van, screaming and begging for Sara to help her. Struck with fear, she freezes when realizing that the driver of the van has kidnapped those girls. Then, the kidnapper locks gazes with her, and she recognizes him as the man who was by the swimming pool earlier. He drops off her towel so she can cover herself, and drives off. Returning home, Sara finds herself conflicted as the kidnapper is one of the very few people in her life who have shown her some kindness and respect, and she decides to not tell anyone about what happened. Things escalate as the search for the missing girls are put into force, and other people are found dead. Sara is not sure how long she can keep her mouth shut in allegiance with the serial killer…

Piggy (original title: Cerdita) was released in 2022 and is Carlota Pereda’s feature film debut, and based on the short film by the same name from 2018. Both the feature film and the short film features Laura Galán in the leading role, and the shooting locations included the village of Villanueva de la Vera and the surrounding areas.

Now, looking at some of the posters for this film, where Sara is covered in blood on a hot Spanish summer day, and others where she’s been edited to be wielding a knife in her hand, one might think this is a typical revenge thriller movie. It’s not. Setting the film off by showing how Sara is bullied by people left and right while getting to meet an actual serial killer who – ironically – is the only person who shows her some kind of affection, really does set the mood. Yes, we sympathize with Sara and what she’s going through, and yeah…we don’t really feel too bad for those girls who are simply portrayed as a group of mean bitches. The exception is supposed to be Claudia, who used to be Sara’s friend, but who now enjoys being with the “cool” girls instead. We can see that she initially hesitates when seeing how the others treat Sara, but she soon joins in and does absolutely nothing to stop them. Despite being somewhat portrayed as the “lesser evil” among the girls, I honestly think she’s just as bad, maybe even worse. So yeah, we want to see Sara getting justice, but it plays out more as a drama thriller where the heroine is constantly plagued with differing feelings of both guilt and loyalty to the man who kidnapped her tormentors. And the majority of the villagers are also portrayed as people who aren’t exactly easy to like, including Sara’s own family, with the exception of her dad who seems to be the only person she’s got an okay relationship with.

Piggy aka Cerdita is a not a typical revenge film or slasher, but as a drama thriller about a bullied girl who ends up fighting quite the dilemma. Who to choose: the serial killer who saved you from your bullies, or the bullies and villagers who couldn’t really give a shit about you? In a regular slasher the answer to that question would have been obvious, but this movie is taking a more realistic approach. Sara never turns into some kind of badass heroine, but instead she’s coming to her own decisions despite her conflicting feelings. Definitely worth a watch, and an interesting take on how a bullied person would deal with having an evil savior.

Writer and director: Carlota Pereda
Country & year: Spain, 2023
Original title: Cerdita
Actors: Laura Galán, Richard Holmes, Carmen Machi, Irene Ferreiro, Camille Aguilar, Claudia Salas, José Pastor, Fernando Delgado-Hierro, Julián Valcárcel, Amets Otxoa
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10399608/