FrightFest review – Pig Hill

FrightFest review – Pig Hill

Bookstore clerk Carrie (Rainey Qualley) has been mysteriously abandoned by her husband Ben, though her overprotective brother Chris (Shiloh Fernandez) has stepped in to keep an eye on her – among her distractions are writing a book about the local legend of Pig Hill, where there have been many disappearances, and a minor flirtation with back-in-town, trauma-haunted nice guy Andy (Shane West), with whom she kind of bonds when he brings in a stack of paperbacks about the Roswell Crash to trade for beer money.  She also works nights in a women’s shelter … which brings her into contact with a mad woman who claims to be pregnant by one of the Pig People and horribly committed to getting rid of the baby.

On top of that horror, her first minor date with Andy is interrupted when her husband turns up again – having defaced her mirror with accusations and blown his head off with a shotgun.  All around town, she glimpses pig-eared silhouettes watching her … which calls her own sanity into question.  Though a local down-and-out speechifies about the Pig People and says they’ve been active for thousands of years, the actual source of a lot of the mythology seems to be her own family lore – and a scary nursery rhyme her brother now claims he made up.  Nevertheless, at mid-point, Carrie finds herself bedraggled in a cage up on Pig Hill, where a monstrous creature called Swill intends that she should be his latest mate.  This would be the last act of many a horror film, but Carrie’s circa 2010 torture porn ordeal (think Hills Have Eyes remake or The Hills Run Red) doesn’t last long and she’s rescued by Andy … which sets the film off down some fresh roads, revisiting what the Pig People are and whether the heroine has really been through what she thinks she has.

The finale, which depends on a monologue from a secondary player, casts the whole thing in a different light, which incidentally takes the edge off a lot of slightly too-hokey horror movie business.  Written by Jarrod Burris (Slay Belles) and directed by Kevin Lewis (Willy’s Wonderland), Pig Hill has a higher level of characterisation and performance than many a mid-range horror film – though it’s also not for the squeamish, and arguably tackles serious matters in a fairly tasteless manner.  With ex-Leatherface R.A. Mihailoff – also a producer – as the Meth King of Pig Hill.

Here’s the FrightFest listing.