When it comes to horror films, the disconcerting moments don’t always come from the blood and violence. In Piggy, the horror emerges from the cruelty of people and their treatment of the film’s protagonist. Written and directed by Carlota Pereda, this Spanish horror film is replete with awful characters doing terrible things, and a protagonist who is caught in a moral situation between the killer and those who bullied her to the point of near death. Piggy (Cerdita in Spanish) has a slow-burn intensity that culminates in a superb ending and, though the film could have had tighter writing and better pacing in places, it’s still a satisfying watch.
Sara (Laura Galán) is a teenager who is mercilessly mocked and bullied by a trio of mean girls — Maca (Claudia Salas), Roci (Camille Aguilar), and Claudia (Irene Ferreiro), Sara’s former friend — over her weight. They call Sara “Piggy,” taking pleasure in tormenting her and nearly drowning her for fun. While it seems like no one is willing to stand up for Sara, not even her own mother (Carmen Machi), whose response to the bullying is that Sara is fat and needs to lose weight, a stranger (Richard Holmes) takes it upon himself to rid Sara of her bullies, kidnapping the mean-girl trio. Sara, who happens across the man mid-kidnapping, is simultaneously in awe of him and terrified of what he might do. When the pool’s lifeguard and a waitress are found dead, Sara’s small town begins to investigate what’s happening, questioning her in the disappearance of Maca, Roci, and Claudia.
Piggy goes out of its way to showcase how terrible people can be. Sara might be somewhat fearful of the stranger throughout the film, but it’s the mistreatment and verbal abuse that has truly affected her. By extension, her history of being cruelly treated impacts how she reacts to the stranger, who acts as her savior after seeing what the mean girls have been up to. Sara often works to stay out of people’s way. Nothing she does is “right” in the eyes of her strict and endlessly angry mother. Sara cowers away from attention and her body tenses when she’s around others, as though she’s ready to take the verbal lashings they might send her way. There is a scene where Sara is at the pool, ready to jump in because she is alone; she freezes upon seeing the stranger and immediately hides her body, slowly removing her hands when she realizes he isn’t criticizing her or staring mockingly.
The film can get bloody, especially in the last third, but much of the tension is built around Sara’s attempts to avoid scrutiny, which, in turn, brings her pent-up anger to the surface and escalates the interpersonal drama. Galán is perfect as Sara, imbuing her character with warmth, frustration, and fear. Sara is insecure about her body and the actress conveys this well, making her character act small in the hopes she will go unnoticed. Galán conveys a lot through her emotive eyes — wonder, fear, guilt, awe, and determination. Sara is someone the audience will root for and empathize with. There is an understanding layered into the film regarding why Sara refrains from revealing what she saw to the police and the mean girls’ desperate parents, and these feelings are on full display in Galán’s performance.
More than anything, Pereda’s film explores the violence of bullying. Piggy isn't a straightforward revenge film, but it does grapple with the emotional turmoil put upon Sara in a situation of moral conflict. Does she say something in the hopes that someone will rescue the girls who have made her life a living hell? Does she leave them to die knowing that she could have spoken up about their attacker, even if they had no issue nearly killing her days earlier? It’s a dilemma that certainly haunts Sara throughout Piggy, and the combination of that and the verbal abuse she continues to endure by her family and the townspeople culminate in an ending that will have audiences intrigued.
Piggy is far from perfect, however. The film meanders a bit in the middle, mostly due to the lack of tight writing, and this affects the pacing of the film, which slows down before picking back up ahead of its conclusion. These things don’t deter the horror film at all, though, and while it’s often hard to watch because of how vicious things can get, Piggy is certainly worth it in the end.
Piggy played during Fantastic Fest 2022 in September. The film will open exclusively at Alamo Drafthouse cinemas on October 7 before releasing in more theaters and on-demand October 14. The film is 90 minutes long and is not rated.