Oh man, the premise for Pig Hunt has so much porky potential: A group of city slickers hunting wild boar in the forests of California are menaced by a 3,000-pound monster. Suuuuu-ey! But Pig Hunt contains some serious disappointments: (1) The mutant boar’s enormous size isn’t actually all that fearsome, once you consider the largest pig on record was a 2,500-pound hog at the 1933 World’s Fair. (2) We don’t see the boar until the final 10 minutes. (3) The real villains are actually the cult of pot growers who offer human sacrifices to “Hogzilla.” (4) Not a single bacon joke is cracked throughout the entire movie.
And dear lord, are the characters annoying. There’s the loud-mouthed black guy, the frat bro with the goofy hat, the pudgy whiny guy, and the moderately hot chick who’s a better shot than any of the men. I could not wait for them all to get eaten. But throughout most of the movie, our protagonists are fighting hillbilly woods people instead of a giant pig. Perhaps I’m being hard on the ham-fisted Pig Hunt: Sure, the film is meant to be bad. But if you’re looking for bad, you can do a whole lot better.
I saw Pig Hunt at the Fantasia film festival in Montreal last year and I am coming to see it again and bringing friends.
Ned, you didn’t get the film at all, and you should have left your expectations at the door. Your points: 1&2) It is about the giant pig like Animal Farm is about livestock. Besides if it were all about the pig, it would be nothing more than a retread of every mutant monster chase movie – go rewatch Anaconda. The fun of Pig Hunt is that it keeps you guessing, at least it would have before this spoilers in this review. 3) That’s not cool enough for you? I would still go see the movie “Cult of Pot Growers Who Offer Human Sacrifices to ‘Hogzilla'”.4) You missed them all: The Pork Store in the Haight, Makin’ Bacon T-shirt, all the pork-rinds to name a few. If they made overt jokes, you would call it ham-fisted as well.
Yeah the characters are annoying clueless city slickers, which is why they get into trouble and also why you can enjoy seeing them get roughed up. Who you root for in this film is part of the fun: Urbanites? Rednecks? Hippie cultists? The practical-effects animatronic giant boar? What about the score and acting by Primus’ Les Claypool?
Folks, do you like horror/action/grindhouse/explotation flicks from the 70s? See Pig Hunt. Did you laugh at Jason X? See Pig Hunt.