PIGLADY (2023)

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Directed by Adam Fair.
Written by Adam Fair, Alex C. Johnson.
Starring Alicia Karami, Jeffery Hunter, Alex C. Johnson, Shyvhan Storm, Liam Watkins, Karri Davis, Geno Romo, Lazarus Tate, Autumn Teague
Find out more about this film here!!

An eccentric woman lives on the edge of town raising pigs, which would be fine if not for the fact that occasionally, she likes to go out and kill people and make pork chops out of them. Four pretty people decide to take a nice cabin vacation for the weekend on the land next to the Piglady’s property making them next up on the slaughter block.

Dammit if I wasn’t intrigued when I caught the preview of PIGLADY. There’s something about pigs and horror that makes me immediately interested, as films like HANNIBAL, MOTEL HELL, and of course, PIGS, are films I can return to time and time again. Turns out, PIGLADY isn’t really a good movie. It’s roughly put together, scantily written, and moderately acted, but there’s a charm to the movie I can’t deny.

I like the little details used throughout PIGLADY such as the fact that we never full on see the Piglady’s face. There are hints that she’s probably not the most attractive damsel in town, but aside from being a little bigboned, she seems to be relatively normal. Still, never showing her face and going the Charlie Brown-adult route gives her the kind of aura that immediately makes her ominous and frightening. The filmmakers attempt to do the Michael Myers thing where the Piglady is standing in the background and the viewer can see her through a window or doorway, but the hapless victims never do. I also really like the fact that the pigs are constantly roaming around, suggesting that the Piglady is there watching them in the shadows and is being followed by her gaggle of porkers, stalking her prey. These little details make for an interesting villain.

Unfortunately, the movie around the Piglady is flawed beginning with the editing. There are some very strange and off-timed edits to PIGLADY, as if it were edited by someone who had never edited a movie before. Transitions from one scene to the next are very rough. I get what the director was going for, but in the cutting room floor, the scene-to-scene transitions just didn’t work, making everything feel like a random kidnappers note put together with different fonts that don’t work well together. On top of that, the motivation of the Piglady is foggy. She just starts killing everyone and while the local police are suspicious of her behavior, she really could have gone on killing randos and not been caught. Instead, she endangers her house, home, and business simply because the vacationers are in the area. Her rampage on the group really just made no sense as they seemed to treat her with respect when they meet her earlier in the movie and really did nothing to incur her wrath.

The acting is ok for this type of low budgeter. Sure some of the characters are annoying as all get out. There’s a gung ho marine know-it-all who never shies away from giving his macho take on any issue. There’s the forced conflict between the two women in the group out of nowhere only to end immediately after with hugsies. These characters serve their function as fodder for the Piglady but aren’t really well realized.

PIGLADY turns out to be pretty gory. Of course, there’s cannibalism. There are butcher scenes. There is some weird sex between the Piglady and a drugged-up drifter. All of them looking more realistic than sensational. PIGLADY isn’t anything I’d recommend to anyone but the hardcore and grungy slasher fan. There’s an air of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 as Piglady has an altar filled with pig and human parts. There’s a weird latter sequence with a little baby and a person wearing a Pig-head. I just wish the film would have spent as much time on the fundamentals like editing, characterization, and pacing, as they did developing the creepiness of the Piglady character. It’s all very piggy and sustained my attention, but barely at that.

Check out the trailer here!!