Review by Matt Harries
Anyone who reads this site regularly will know that the ‘found footage’ film inspires somewhat mixed emotions. I consider myself to be relatively un-jaded with the format, mainly because I have studiously avoided it, with the exception of the first [REC] film. I even have to admit to never watching The Blair Witch Project. So, given the opportunity to review The Pigman Murders, I thought why not? Maybe I would be more immune to the quirks and foibles of the genre. Whether the film itself would be worth bothering with would be another question.
The Pigman Murders is about a group of blokes in their early 30’s who decide to journey to the picturesque wilderness of Connemara in Ireland, to pay homage to their friend Brendan who had died of cancer almost a year earlier. They decided to have a professional cameraman join them to document the trip and eventually provide an edited version which would be a gift to Brendan’s family. The idea being to give them a document of anecdotes and stories about Brendan taken from a place which he was evidently fond. It hardly counts as a spoiler to hear that this did not go to plan, the expedition falling foul to a rampage of hideous porcine butchery. However – get this – it was all caught on film because the professional cameraman was there! The camera was recovered – found even. So it was that The Pigman Murders nestled neatly into the conventions of the genre like a proverbial pig in…well you know.
This is where I experienced my first nervous twitch of irritation. The idea that a bunch of lads would think anyone else could possibly enjoy a video of them all getting drunk and stoned seemed far fetched enough. The whole ‘professional’ cameraman angle just seemed like a crude way to shoehorn the found footage angle into the story. It felt like the makers of the film started out thinking ‘we have to make a found footage film’, then having created the clunky conceit the story would be built around that.
Anyway, so there you go – the scene is set. A bunch of good, Irish boys, off on the craic. Only this is to mark the anniversary of their friend’s passing away, so everyone gets a moment to say their piece one-to-one with the camera. These monologues all pretty much went as follows; ‘hi Brendan’s family, this is x. I knew Brendan since I was at secondary school. He was a great bloke, I miss him every day. I hope you’ll enjoy this video.’ Maybe once or twice this device could have worked, bringing a little personality to the group, some background and a sense of the reason behind the video. After four or five barely distinguishable monologues it all becomes a bit pointless.
My one other major gripe – indeed the very mother of all gripes about The Pigman Murders – is the dreadful, repetitious and unconvincing effects used to illustrate the lo-fi found footage style camera work. This meant a perpetual cycling of the same ‘camera glitch effects’, over and over. The screen goes all grainy, as if experiencing interference. The screen splits into two moving sections. The screen flashes. The screen blips. From beginning to end, the same glitches. So much for your professional cameraman. He’s shining you on boys! He’s a chancer with an old video camera he picked up in a jumble sale! Ach just thump the bloody thing for chrissakes! It all starts to resemble a late night episode of Chris Morris’s Jam, designed somehow to cause brain bubbles, strokes, seizures. Eventually I felt like Herbert Lom, wincing at the mention of Clouseau, as a spark of annoyance shot into my cortex every time the screen flickered.
Off into the wild they tramp, and the conventions of the genre continue to stack up. Being good Irish boys, a scrap is inevitable. I can’t remember what actually triggered this, but they start fighting (well, falling to the ground in a tangled heap really), and old grievances come to the surface. A couple of the group sulk off back down the road. The remainder of the party head into the wilderness with an increasingly weary trudge. There’s a camp fire. An interminable acoustic guitar sing-song. Glitch. Fuzz. Screen goes weird. Sigh…then for no obvious reason the ‘scrapping’ starts again. A gunshot sounds, once, twice. The camera hovers just above the ground as they run off into the woods… Glitch. Fuzz. Colour test thing appears.
What The Pigman Murders needed was a good monster to liven things up a bit. I had high hopes of a creature of legend, in the form of a large pink pig with a man’s head, galloping round goring people with vicious tusks, oinking with preternatural fury. Or even a bearded axe-wielding loon on a sled driving a team of horror-pigs before him with unholy yells and whipcracks. No such luck. What we get, without any preamble or back-story or explanation, are a couple of hoodies with pig masks and daggers. Okay, they make realistic pig sounds, I’ll give them that. But when a film skimps on the whole camera work thing, and then similarly fails to invest any time or effort in creating a noteworthy twist or creature or anything, it all reeks of a lack of imagination and effort.
I didn’t hate The Pigman Murders – well, I hated the rubbish lo-fi camera effects – but so little effort went into making an interesting or unusual element in the film, I have a hard time recommending it. A bit of blood gurgling aside the gore is not much to get excited about. The characters are all fairly accurate renditions of ‘normal’ blokes, and I suppose at least they didn’t populate the film with the usual cliched stereotypes (nerd, stoner, jock etc). Unfortunately that means you don’t really care when things start to go awry.
So, in summary; only recommended to fans of unimaginative, low budget, found footage type horror. Hmm, perhaps I’m more jaded than I realised.
The Pigman Murders is out now on Region 2 DVD from 88 Films.