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15 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
As a horror or monster movie fan you should give it a go !!, 21 September 2009

Author: broeoeh from Germany

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Pig Hunt get's 8 out of 10 points from me. It has everything that should be in a horror movie, some weirdos (like the "redneck family neighbors" or the "hippie community") and some strong characters like Jason Foster who sometimes visually comes up like a sort of "badass" Aragorn ( by the way Travis Aaron Wade and Tina Huang as main char's did a great job, too). The story has multiple threats what makes it more interesting than other films in this genre, it contains enough suspense, horror and gore (great job on the special FX even the mutant pig) and good action too! As there are many horror movies simply duplicating old "hits" this one does not come up with really something new, but it has enough potential not to see it as a copy of the older genre stuff because of his mixture of horror and monster movie. As a real fan of this genre i spend a good time on that!

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17 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Review Mitch Davis: Fantasia Film Festival + Anton Bitel: Frightfest London, 28 July 2008

Author: robert-1450 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

From Jim Isaac, director of JASON X, comes what's almost certainly the wildest American horror film of the year. It's a killer monster pig film. It's a psycho-hog biker film. It's a city-dwellers-ambushed-in-redneck-hell film. It's a hippie sex film. Baby, it's PIG HUNT! And you could just tell it's coming from the man who put Jason in space! This time, he's gone indie and worked outside the Hollywood system to create an exploitation hybrid without limits that's funny, tense and surprising, with one seriously cool monster pig at its center and enough unapologetic raunch and violence to make a studio executive's eyes bleed.

Deep country bliss turns into punishing green hell when John, his girlfriend and a group of buddies head out from San Francisco for a getaway weekend of pig-hunting (!) at the middle-of-nowhere ranch of his recently deceased uncle. They learn about a ravenous 3,000-pound black boar that resides in the area. It's known as the Ripper and, well, it's a freaking 3,000-pound black boar! Before they even reach their destination, they rub a heavily armed local gang the wrong way. They arrive at the ranch and it's been vandalized. A red spray-painted message warns that "death walks on all fours." No matter, John and the gang are going pig-hunting! Another word would smash into spoiler territory, but you should know that the film evolves in radical, crazy ways and by the time the credits roll, you'll have seen a violent mash-up that crosses paths with everything from DELIVERANCE, GRIZZLY and THE ROAD WARRIOR to your favorite stoner death-cult pics! Most astonishing of all is how it takes you there, gradually treading away from the character-driven and plausible into something so outlandish and supercharged it will rocket you clean through the roof. Isaac calls it "cinematic punkabilly" and we can definitely vibe with that. Watch out for an off-the-hook performance by Primus's Les Claypool, who got so into his role that he actually broke a finger during a take and kept right on going!

From Fright Fest London -- Anton Bitel "... the very best was reserved till last, and those who had stayed the distance were rewarded with perhaps the finest horror film to have been made this year. To say that the latest from James Isaac (whose previous features have been the space-set Jason X, and the execrable Skinwalkers) begins with a veteran hunter being pursued and attacked in the woods by an unseen behemoth with the unmistakable snort of a hog, would be to conjure the spectre of Russell Mulcahy's Razorback (1984) – but Pig Hunt is so much more than just a cheap porcine creature feature.

In fact, the crazy yet utterly coherent way in which Isaacs keeps wrong-footing the viewer is half the fun. On the one hand, it is a monster movie through and through, but that hardly explains the masculine rites of passage, the Deliverance-style clash of urban and rural, the naked hippie psychedelia, the Orwellian allegory of human bestiality or, most crucially of all, the oblique but insistent exploration of the US' questionable embroilment in Iraq. To say much more would be to ruin the surprise, so let's just leave it at this: Pig Hunt is viscerally exciting enough to wake the dead, and yet politically and morally engaged enough to gore its way right into your brain. What more could anyone want from a horror movie? To quote one of the film's final lines (itself pointedly quoted from one George W Bush), "Mission accomplished"."

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13 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Variety review from Dennis Harvey, 15 April 2009

Author: MysticalGibberish from United States

A mashup of elements from "Razorback," "Deliverance" and other rural-peril faves, "Pig Hunt" proves an enjoyably offbeat hybrid horror exercise. Helmer Jim Isaac's first indie production, following several compromised studio efforts including sci-fi slasher "Jason X," amplifies the quirkiness of Robert and Zach Anderson's screenplay by unpredictably mixing disparate pacing, tones, humor and brute action. Sum isn't entirely satisfying, and the current marketplace preference for formulaic scare pics won't help B.O. But fans tired of rote remakes and ripoffs will appreciate the pic's idiosyncrasy. It's currently playing limited theatrical gigs while in search of a wider distribution deal.

Four twentysomething buds, led by John (Travis Aaron Wade), leave San Francisco for a weekend of game hunting in rural Mendocino County, though the guys-only plan goes south when John's g.f. Brooks (Tina Huang) -- who turns out to be the group's sharpest shooter -- insists on coming along.

After being warned about an improbable 3,000-lb. "Pigfoot" (aka "the Ripper") roaming wild, they acquire uninvited company in the form of two local yokels who have an apparent score to settle with John.

City-slicks-vs.-hicks tension soon gets ugly, resulting in full-on war waged by the large, inbred Tibbs clan against the panicked visitors. Meanwhile, carnivorous Hogzilla turns out to be no mythical beastie.

A local "hippie commune" consisting of one charismatic male (Bryonn Bain) and his sizable harem of Amazonian babes further adds to the eventual mayhem, which doesn't explode until halfway through the pic's runtime.

Slow start has its own rewards in atmosphere and slyly offbeat rhythms; when the porcine stool finally hits the fan, the action (especially that taking place chez Tibbs) is no-holds-barred muscular. Given the welcome sense that the story might lunge in any direction at any time, however, the final payoff (which involves some not-very-convincing creature effects) is a little less kicky than one might have hoped.

Perfs are enthusiastic, tech and design contribs above-average.

Score by Les Claypool of Primus adds to hipster cachet; he and blues mouth harpist Charlie Musselwhite contribute cameo roles.

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20 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :-
The Pig Hunt, 26 January 2009

Author: Colby Edgmon from United States

I don't claim to be an omniscient movie critic; however, "The Pig Hunt"-for a lack of better words-was incredible. A film about a prodigious and demented wild boar is unique, horrifying, and entrancing. It was disquieting yet incredibly captivating. I forgot I was even at the festival the last 45 minutes. It was incredibly well put together, shocking, disturbing and absolutely fascinating. Also, it's a very unique film. It was a film that doesn't seem to have been done in the past. All the movies nowadays are just remakes of old ones with a spiced up actor and plot. The sounds used in the movie are flawless. The Boar Horn, (spine tingling) and then the base line equates to pure adrenaline. It was as effective and moving as the Jaws tune when the shark approaches. Each time the base line would come on, you could feel the adrenaline from the film captivate you and suck you right in.

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17 out of 30 people found the following comment useful :-
Pig Hunt was hilarious, scary., 10 November 2008

Author: byron-spooner from United States

Hilarious and scary, disturbing and gruesome, Pig Hunt is a wonderful escapade through the wilds of Northern California culture. You'll be rooting to see at least one of the characters get it before the end and chances are you won't be disappointed. (I particularly enjoyed the beheading of a very minor character.) The giant hog is scary, realistic and apparently insatiably hungry.

Joe Lucas has a small role done to perfection. Les Claypool is exhilarating as a crazed man of God. Brion Bain properly menacing as the cult-leading hippie/nut job.

Don't miss this one.

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13 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Hog Wild, 3 November 2008

Author: GhoulishPorridge from Pacific Grove, CA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Twenty-some years ago drive-in-movie aficionado Joe Bob Briggs laid out two basic rules for horror movies: 1. Anybody can die at any time.

2. The innocent will suffer.

Pig Hunt satisfies the first condition admirably. Regardless of race, creed, politics, or hog-worshiping-cult membership, damn near everybody in the film is doomed..

It hedges on the second rule, but only because there just ain't that much innocence to be found in the lawless, gun-happy wilds of Northern California where the film is set.

But don't worry, there's more than enough suffering to go around..

The film doesn't feature the sort of torture-porn you find in the "Hostel" or "Saw" franchises, but there's gore galore and tons of rip-, hog-, and drug-snorting action.

The lively script by Robert Mailer Anderson and Zack Anderson provides surprising plot twists, heart-stopping action, and healthy dollops of verbal and visual black humor.

The basic premise: A bunch of San Francisco latte-sippers try to survive in an alien environment. Some of them do.

John Hickman (Travis Aaron Wade) gets three of his San Francisco pals to join him for some wild-pig hunting in the hinterlands of Mendocino County. John's a serious cross-bow hunter who grew up in that area and knows the land and the people.

The three pals are greenhorns.

Quincy (Trevor Bullock) is definitely out of his league. He's the guy who always got wedgies in junior high.

Wayne (Rajiv Shah) wears fresh-off-the-rack cameo and totes a brand new rifle with a top-of-the-line sniper scope. Unfortunately, he can't hit a beer can at twenty feet.

Ben (Howard Johnson) is a non-combatant who wears military garb and packs a high-powered pistol, but he's clearly never taken an NRA safety course.

John's girlfriend, Brooks (Tina Huang), completes the quintet. Although she's a knockout, the pals are expecting an all-guy adventure and are miffed that she's tagging along. (Contrary to horror genre tradition, she's not there as a scream queen. She turns out to be more macho than most of the males in the posse.) The group departs latte land and heads out to the boondocks of Mendocino County. Their first stop is a general store in rural Boonville operated by Charlie (bluesman Charlie Musselwhite). If there's a sane head in the menagerie of weird folk in that area, it rest on his shoulders. Which makes it all the more ominous when John's pals ask him who killed the legendary 3,000-pound wild boar known as The Ripper.

"Nobody," Charlie says. "He's still out there." At the store the would-be hunters also encounter the Hippie Stranger (Bryonn Bain), a fearsome presence. He packs a sheathed machete on his back and shares a van with a passel of retro-hippie women, who, it will turn out, are members of your typical Mendocino County nudist, pot-growing, lesbian, hog-worshiping cult.

As the group sets out for the Boonville boonies, Charlie blows a few blues riffs on his harp, a hint of the heavier blues in store for the crew.

On their way to no- (normal) man's land they pass a household of surly country folk, bikers, and butchered woodland creatures. The patriarch of the DNA-gone-bad clan is The Preacher, played by musician Les Claypool of Primus, who adds a counterpoint to Musselwhite's sanity. He doesn't sing, but he sure kicks ass.

John and his guests set up their base camp next to the ramshackle cabin where John's late uncle lived--and died under mysterious circumstances. The cabin has been trashed and tagged with the cryptic graffito "Death walks on all fours." To heighten the mood of foreboding, Mother Nature supplies a humongous rattlesnake, the mutilated remains of slaughtered emus, and a crucified squirrel (which pays homage, perhaps, to the 715 crucified wooden squirrels in producer/writer Robert Mailer Anderson's 2001 novel Boonville).

The group is soon joined by the sinister Jake Tibbs (Jason Foster) and his Iraq war vet brother Ricky (Nick Tagas). They're old acquaintances of John's and part of The Preacher's clan. After some unpleasant reminiscing, John grudgingly accepts their offer to serve as hunting guides.

From then on things do not go well–for anybody. It's pretty much pedal-to-the-metal action, deftly handled by director James Isaac.

It's a low budget film, but it doesn't look cheap or cheesy. When The Preacher leads his throng on a mission of righteous revenge the stunts are spectacular. (They're the real deal. During the filming Claypool broke a finger, but kept on trucking'. ) In another break from genre tradition, the acting–from the leads to the extras–is convincing.

The film doesn't depend on special effects, but its king-hell special effect, The Ripper–3,000 pounds of cranky pork–is realistic and truly scary.

Meth-fueled backwoods bikers, Road Warrior car crashes, be-headings, disembowelment's, back-stabbings, shootings, throat slitting, and ferocious monster-hog munching account for much of the carnage. Bad hunting habits also take their toll. As Ricky Tibbs observes early on, "Lot of crazy *bleep* in these woods." Crazy or not, for the viewer it provides a delightfully macabre thrill ride through the savage Northern California wilderness.

At film's end, John sums up the monstrous snafu he's instigated with two words that are indelibly associated with the grand master of ill-conceived debacles: "Mission accomplished." Entertaining, frightening, suspenseful, absurd, and weirdly logical.

Sterling Johnson is a drive-in-movie fan of long standing and the author of English as a Second *bleeping* Language.

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16 out of 30 people found the following comment useful :-
A group of friends go away for a hunting trip and end up as the prey in this stylish, scary, funny, thriller., 1 November 2008

Author: barbash from United States

What a terrific, frightening, funny, hip, bizarre in the best way, film. Think Deliverance meets Straw Dogs meets Pulp Fiction. Well acted and superbly directed. It's like your best and worst acid trip combined with guns and a wild pig, all played out to the frazzled and electrifying soundtrack of one Les Claypool. It starts in San Francisco with four friends going north for a hunting trip at the protagonist, John's uncle's ailing hunting lodge. The locals are more than a little rough around the edges, but so in many ways are our heroes. What separates this one from a lot of films in the horror genre is the edgy intelligence, and the subversive sense of humor, products of the twisted genius of the Anderson cousins (Robert has a brilliant cameo as Big Train and gets his head lopped off). Before long, the city folk meet a pair of locals, brothers, Jake and Ricky who have a history with the protagonist. We also meet the leader of a hippie cult, whose lair of water beds and a mother lode of marijuana, is gorgeously shot, a populated by blond-wigged hippie nymphs, like something out of a Peter Fonda film. Brooks, John's girlfriend was my favorite character, strong and beautiful, and an expert shot. Soon enough we encounter the wild pigs, and the Ripper, a 3,000 pounder with an attitude. I won't say more, because the film is full of surprises.

Suffice to say, I will see this one again.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Pig Hunt- A great horror film...., 10 November 2009

Author: MovieGuy01 from United Kingdom

I just watched Pig Hunt tonight and i thought that it was a great horror film. It is about a man called John who takes his friends in San Francisco to his deceased uncle's ranch to hunt wild pigs, a guys weekend with guns despite John's sexy girlfriend Brooks being there with them. But as John and his crew go deeper into the forest, they begin to find out the truth about his uncle's death and the legend of The Ripper a murderous 3000 pound black boar pig! They go on an adventure through fields of marijuana and into the muddy landscape of Big Wallow, they are loaded with weapons, they meet the violent Tibbs Brothers, and a group of throat-slitting Cult Girls who grow marijuana by day and worship the giant killer pig by night. there only chance of getting away alive is to stay together. I found there to be a lot a gore and strong bloody violence in this film, but i thought that it ended up being a great horror film. 6/10

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Problems, 19 November 2009

Author: kosmasp

I will start with the one really good thing about the movie! It's the sound(track). I really loved it. It's a bit country mixed with other influences and it really worked for me. Not everyone at the Festvial I watched this at, was as hyped about it as me though, but that's how everyone receives certain things.

Now onto the problems: There is not much happening in the movie. And while the direction it takes (concentrating on the characters) is not really a bad one, it doesn't have either the script/dialog nor the actors to carry something like that. Still a few (too little) action set pieces and some fine moments plus the music prevent this movie from falling completely down ...

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0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
The Pig in question is merely an afterthought, 24 October 2009

Author: Marty Brooks from South Carolina

It's a shame really. I believe there are only two other killer pig movies besides this one - The terrific Aussie pig movie Razorback and the direct-to-video Syfy slopfest Hogzilla. While Pig Hunt is a better movie than Hogzilla, it's still a horribly idiotic and just plain odd horror-comedy.

If you're going to make a movie about a giant man eating killer pig, please for the love of God, make the pig the main threat of the movie. Don't focus on every inane little thing. I can't believe this film is getting good reviews.

The only good part of the film is the actual pig. When it finally appears it is truly a terrifying and hellish looking monster pig. It looks like it crawled from the depths of hell and is actually brought to life with some great special animatronic effects.

Do yourself a favor and just watch the final 15 minutes. It's the only good part of the film. Otherwise, just ignore it's existence.

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