In Piggy, Sara is a shy, plus-sized teenager, who works with her family at their butcher shop. But due to the nature of the job, as well as her weight, she has no confidence, zero friends, and finds herself constantly becoming the source of ridicule from all the other teens in the town.
Each day when she’s not working, Sara takes a trip to the local pool to bathe in the waters. But on her most recent excursion to the pool, she is joined by a spiteful group of girls who make fun of her weight and steal her clothes.
Upset and forced to walk home in only her bikini, Sara passes through a wooded area where she sees a van parked by the side of the track. As she walks by, she fails to notice the owner of the van bundling her tormentors into the back of the vehicle.
After the van starts up its engine, it drives past Sara, then stops. As she looks ahead, Sara sees one of the girls is trapped inside the vehicle, with her hand pressed against the glass on the rear door.
The girl – who Sara knows as Claudia – sees Sara and calls out for help, but Sara freezes in terror. Uncertain of what to do, she doesn’t act on the horror she sees in front of her, and instead returns home, and remains silent about the kidnappings.
Over the next few days, an investigation gets underway as the police search for the missing girls. But with Sara being the only witness, will she reveal what she knows, or will she maintain her silence as payback for all the bullying she has endured?
Written and directed by Carlota Pereda, Piggy (aka Cerdita) stars Laura Galán and Carmen Machi. The movie is a slow-burning Spanish horror-thriller, which was released in Spain back in 2022, but is now available to buy through video-on-demand platforms in the UK.
However, before you rush to spend your hard-earned cash on the film, you may wish to know that while Piggy has a decent set-up, a grim and gritty aesthetic, and a few decent ideas, it’s not quite as strong as it could be. The film is plodding in places, it never really gets going, and ultimately doesn’t bring home the bacon.
I wanted to like this movie, and I was genuinely onboard when Sara witnessed the kidnappings, and I hoped the film would go down a ‘revenge slasher’ route. But after the sequence with the van, the story shot off in other directions, failed to capitalise on its premise, and delivered little in the way of action or suspense.
I stuck with it regardless, and for a while I felt some of character work hit the right notes, but overall my interest in the film took a bit of a nosedive. Things did pick up again during the final ten minutes, with a more horror-infused climax offering up a hint of what could have been, but by then it was all a little too late.
Not awful, and filled with lots of potential, Piggy has its moments, but it just doesn’t quite come together. Had it moved a little more swiftly, leaned a little harder into horror, or injected some action into proceedings, then it would have been a much stronger piece.
All that said, Laura Galán is good in the lead role, and it certainly tries hard to deliver its story. I just wanted more.
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