The Pigman Murders Review

Normally, I'm a sucker for a guy in a mask, esepcially a cool mask like a pig one. Pigs freak me out. I'm also not a found footage hater, and most of the time I dig indie cinema. Knowing that, you'd think that The Pigman Murders was going to be a fairly entertaining movie for yours truly. You'd be wrong, but I can see where you'd think that. As it turned out, Pigman was disappointing, and at times downright annoying.

Plot wise, there's not a lot to get into. A group of guys are getting together to celebrate the life of a friend of theirs who has recently passed away. They hire a camera man to film the entire weekend, filled with drinking, fighting, and tales of debauchery involving their fallen mate. The plan is to give this footage to the guy's family...because that's what every young man's parents want to see. Things take a turn for the worse when they enter the woods though, and the guys end up on the run from a ruthless killer in a Pig Mask, probably.

I said probably there because this movie commits the cardinal slasher film sin of almost no screen time for our masked hero. Movie people, we come to these things for the killer. Plain and simple. If we don't get to see the killer, we won't be very happy with your work. I really, really wanted to like this movie. The cover art is sick, and as I said, a pig mask is just an awesome visual. Aside from a lack of presence from the killer, the other thing that bugged me about this movie is the constant flicker and skipping of the "tape". I get that this is supposed to be the footage found in a camera in the woods, but it was literally every 10-20 seconds. I hoped as time went on it would lighten up a bit and just play the movie, but it never did.

The kills themselves were the one bright point in the movie. They weren't inventive, they almost all happened off camera, and they weren't particularly brutal, still there was some decent practical gore, and when the rest of the movie is as disappointing as Pigman was, you'll be surprised at what you focus in on for positives. The cast was also not terrible, for this sort of microbudgeted production.

Don't let the fantastic cover art on this one fool you too. I want to believe The Pigman Murders had it's heart in the right place. It definitely had potential. I can't imagine it was all that difficult to throw a pig mask on a guy and have him run around in the woods with a knife, hell I would've done it if they'd called me, but for some reason this movie focuses far too much on the victims, and gives the killers an almost indicated presence. If you're a die hard slasher fan who has to see every single one that's ever been made, check this out for some ok gore and not much else. Everybody else, look elsewhere for your mask wielding maniacs.