That’ll do pig, that’ll do.

This film speaks Australian.  Sometimes it does rural Aussie dialogue perfectly and sometimes it does it terribly. There is no middle ground.  For no particular reason there are also a number of characters with overseas accents.  I’m really not sure how or why John Jarratt and Ernie Dingo both agreed to be in this, but Simone Buchanan (Secret Valley, Hey Dad, Neighbours) seems right on point.

It’s very obvious from the title alone that this is a pig story.  But it’s not the complex nuanced story of Razorback.  It’s a story that just keeps screaming “there’s a big pig everyone!” And that’s the entire plot.  There are so many characters introduced sequentially to be served up as pig chew toys… but not really any real sense of main characters to bond with.  This makes aspects of the story quite confusing if, as I did, you’re constantly trying to reframe the new characters into a coherent sense of story.

The pig, or boar itself is quite confusing.  Sometimes it is loud as t-rex in Jurassic Park, and sometimes it is as silent as a ghost.  It is also omnipresent… appearing in multiple locations at once.  This leads one to believe there are possibly more than one of these big pigs.  It’s all pretty much done with practical effects, a great big pig-muppet.  So there are a lot of close ups of its gnashing jaws.  People punching it in the snout.  It bites a lot of people, but super strangely doesn’t seem to eat anyone.  And a pig that big surely needs a lot of food to keep it going?

Sometimes we jump from day to night in one strange change of scene.  There is a giant man, ex-wrestler Nathan Jones and I would have liked to see more of him feeding his baby lambs and goats.  For no real character or plot connected reason, at one point he sings along to Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby.  It blows my mind that this is included as surely rights to the song would have cost a fortune.  But perhaps it’s one of those writer-director artefacts.  Maybe he was on a roll.  I mean the car does roll.

Some people die, some people live, there’s a big pig and it’s hard to know if I cared about any of it.

J* gives it 2 stars.

PS. It was apparently filmed in Gympie.
https://www.gympietimes.com.au/news/big-announcement-for-gympie-filmed-horror-movie/3403819/#/0