A young teen, ridiculed by her classmates for her weight, becomes the harbinger of horrific events in this stylish Spanish grindhouse horror.
Sara (Laura Galán) – the ‘piggy’ in question – works with her parents in their butcher shop over the summer break. She hides from them the constant abuse she receives from a gang of girls at her school, led by Maca (Claudia Salas), who makes Rachel McAdams’ Regina George in Mean Girls seem like a shrinking violet. The bullying becomes physical at a local swimming pool, witnessed only by a stranger. But when he attacks and kidnaps Sara’s persecutors,
she has to weigh up whether to come clean with what she knows.
Piggy is the latest in a series of female-directed horror films that take a refreshing perspective on what had been for too long a traditionally male-dominated genre. And Carlota Pereda’s film doesn’t hold back. It earns its grindhouse stripes by being utterly uncompromising in its vision, which at times edges towards hallucinogenic. It’s a striking, full-blooded work of suspense. But it knows that whatever horrors face us in this fictional scenario, they pale against the experiences anyone like Sara has to face on a daily basis.
