Pig Hunt

Plot synopsis:
The film begins with a man running for his life through the forest, obviously in a panic he hides behind a tree, trying to spot what was following him. As he looks around, something comes up from behind him, throwing him up into the air and back down again. The man screams as something begins eating him, and as the man dies, the camera turns to a pair of dog tags that are slowly overtaken by a small river of blood.
John Hickman (Travis Aaron Wade) and his girlfriend Brooks (Tina Huang) are a pair of San Francisco residents who invite their friends, self-proclaimed tough guy and wannabe soldier Ben (Howard Johnson Jr.), his close friend Wayne (Rajiv Shah), as well as chef Quincy (Trevor Bullock) and his dog Wolfgang, to a weekend of hunting, drinking and fun and camping near John's uncle's cabin, in a remote mountain area. Ben and Wayne can't stand Brooks, and the feeling is mutual-they spend much of the trip getting on each other's nerves. En route, they stop at a gas station/general store for directions and encounter a van of hippie women and their cult leader, the Hippie Stranger, (Bryonn Bain) who live in a commune in the woods, presumably raising emus for meat. From the store owner, they learn about a local legend called "The Ripper," a legendary killer hog which supposedly weighs several thousand pounds. After obtaining some supplies and directions, they make their way to the cabin, passing through a hillbilly homestead belonging to the Tibbs clan, all of whom drop what they are doing to watch them pass by. One young boy is perched in a tree, and drops a dead animal carcass on the hood of their car as they pass underneath. When they get to John's uncle's cabin, they find it has been vandalized and is uninhabitable, though John maintains the rednecks down the road weren't responsible. The group pitches their tents and camps outside.
The next morning, they encounter methamphetamine-addicted hillbilly brothers Jake (Jason Foster) and Ricky Tibbs, (Nick Tagas) cousins of John's, who are interested in joining them on a wild hog hunt. An old feud still exists between John and Ricky, who is a Gulf War veteran showing signs of drug addiction and mental illness. His brother Jake appears to be the only person maintaining control and keeping Ricky from flying off the handle. Quincy, who is eager to get to know them, is obviously inexperienced in any sort of outdoor activities, and Ricky accuses Wolfgang of being a 'pet' not a 'dog' seeming equally oblivious to hunting as well. When Jake Tibbs sets up some targets to see how well the others can shoot, boastful Ben makes a fool of himself, not being able to hit the target even once, while Wayne hits it not more than a couple of times. Brooks outshoots both men, to their surprise and chagrin-she impresses Tibbs by hitting the target with every shot.
As the group makes their trip through the woods, they encounter an area called the Big Wallow, and, using a piglet call as a lure, they manage to attract several pigs to their location. One of them rams into Wayne's leg at full charge giving him a compound fracture at the kneecap and incapacitating him. Wolfgang goes charging after the boars while Brooks shows off her marksmanship talents and kills one of them. Ricky calls Jake to come look at something disturbing he's observed while skinning and dressing the hog they killed. Though adult-sized, it has no protective armor over its shoulders-it is not a full grown animal as they had thought, but a piglet-a very, very big piglet. Just as everyone is beginning to wonder about the truth of the Ripper legend, Quincy reappears, very excited. While looking for his dog Wolfgang, he had encountered a large crop of marijuana plants and now leads the others to it, leaving Brooks with Wayne.
A conflict emerges when John objects to Jake and Ricky taking the plants for profit, as they are growing on his property and he wants no part of it. There is also a strange and disturbing sign posted near the plants, which leads John to think that the hippies that he thought were raising emus are actually growing pot instead. During the ensuing argument, Ricky snaps, and holds John at bay with a crossbow. John and Jake Tibbs are trying to gain control of the situation, when Ben arrives on the scene,thinks Ricky is about to kill John, and shoots him. Jake flees to tell his clan, and the others return to Wayne and Brooks. Quincy and Ben start making their way back to the cabin while Brooks and John leave Wayne to find something to make a stretcher with so they can carry him out of there and get back to the cabin and their vehicle. Shortly after their departure, Wayne is attacked by something we don't see, and manages to fire off a single round. Brooks and John circle back and find him missing, as well as Ricky's body.
Meanwhile, Ben and Quincy make their way back to the cabin. They find Wolfgang's mutilated body, and determine he was killed by the Tibbs clan. Ricky and Jake's clan make their appearance, Ben manages to kill his pursuer and escape, but Quincy is knocked out of the vehicle he was attempting to escape in, and is executed by a single gunshot to the back of the head. At the same time, John and Brooks run into the mysterious Hippie Stranger as they hide in the forest; he is carrying a cattle prod, and tells them that he is looking for an escaped animal, and that they can contact the police from his commune. He helps them beat off an attack by the murderous Tibbs clan, and several hillbillies are killed. In the meantime, Ben has found the commune, where he is given drugs by several beautiful hippie women, and led into an enormous, muddy pen. He encounters a dying Wayne, who says that something has been eating him. Ben turns in shock as something approaches him from behind, and screams.
The remaining Tibbs clan members have reached the woods around the commune;they are stalked and killed, one by one, by the murderous hippie women-all except one man, who is seized by something else-something horrifying that we don't see. Brooks and John arrive at the commune with the Hippie Stranger. When John questions why Ben's equipment is there, but not Ben himself, they force him into a cell while the leader takes Brooks out into the pen. At last, we are shown what has been attacking people throughout the movie-it is the legendary Ripper, who is carrying the remains of one of the redneck clan in his mouth. Meanwhile, Jake makes his way into the commune, and is confronted by some of the women. He shoots a couple of them, and forces one of the women to let him into John's cell. As Jake sees the Ripper out in the pen and freezes in shock, the hippie woman he brought with him attacks, stabbing him in the eye with her boar's tooth necklace before John kills her. Jake dies from his wounds while the Hippie Stranger prepares to sacrifice Brooks to the boar, whom he and his followers have for some bizarre reason been worshiping-and feeding unwary people to. Brooks gets a hold of the Stranger's cattle prod and pokes him with it, causing him to cry out, attracting the Ripper's attention. The creature eviscerates him, and Brooks remains as quiet as possible as John forces his way from the cell. Using a crossbow, he fires an arrow up under the boar's jaw, killing it. As Brooks and John make their escape, they come face to face with a young, wild member of the Tibbs clan-the feral little fellow who was sitting in a tree at the beginning of the movie. Fadeout to a black screen with a predicatable quote from Orwell's "Animal Farm."

Tags: cult, murder

Review:
A mashup of elements from "Razorback," "Deliverance" and other rural-peril faves, "Pig Hunt" proves an enjoyably offbeat hybrid horror exercise.
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..
There aren't a whole lot of horror movies out there involving pigs.
So to use pigs as a force for horror, to have them preying on humans, it's a good role reversal.
It was with these thought in mind that I sat down to Pig Hunt, unknowing that the pig action is actually just one aspect of the film, it being more of a backwoods genre mash up.
The film sets about its build up during the course of a hunt, friends out for macho bonding in the forest (though one girlfriend tags along), a soaking, chilly trek with a few hints and rumours to stir a sense of mystery.
Monster pig action is conspicuously absent for quite some time as the film combusts somewhere around the halfway mark, blazes through exciting hick-sploit action and some more unexpected craziness before we finally get into monstrous territory.
A downside of all of this is that such a set up somewhat requires decent, memorable or likable characters and performances and Pig Hunt is pretty meh on the characterisation and acting fronts.
Travis Aaron Wade is a competent enough hero figure, Tina Huang does a fair tough gal schtick as his girlfriend, Howard Johnson Jr. makes for a decent a-hole, slightly more of a punch is provided by Jason Foster and Nick Tagas as wild natured but initially friendly hicks, while most notable is Les Claypool as a bulky, mystical figure who becomes important later on in the game.
There's more nudity than might be expected, which is rather pleasing to behold, and a few good grisly scenes, the film isn't too concerned with gore but uses it for some nifty jolts.
I could have done with more general gore, a shorter first half and longer final block (the film needs more pig!) but generally I was pretty pleased by this one.
Hilarious and scary, disturbing and gruesome, Pig Hunt is a wonderful escapade through the wilds of Northern California culture.
I don't claim to be an omniscient movie critic; however, "The Pig Hunt"-for a lack of better words-was incredible.
Each time the base line would come on, you could feel the adrenaline from the film captivate you and suck you right in..
At first glance, Pig Hunt may seem like one such movie, but once you see it you realize that labelling it as Z-grade may a tad degrading.
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.
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).
First and foremost the score by Les Claypool is one of the worst have ever heard, funky basslines don't really work to convey suspense or anything really, and when it gets to the point of the score consisting of weird chanting by one of the actors in the film, it becomes incredibly confusing as to whether someone is speaking or its the score.
The last part of the movie gets entertaining as the remaining guys from the gang escape the violent hillbillies and end up at the cult's house and meet the giant boar as well as some sexy girls.There is a troubling trend in horror movies to present our cast as nothing but bunch of annoying, bickering idiots, insulting and threatening each other for hours.
Pig Hunt- A great horror film.....
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.
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.
What a loser.Just like that stupid kid in high school who had nothing to talk about besides 'cool' things, Pig Hunt is the same way.
Honestly, that scene at the hippie commune....what the f@ck?More than anything with Pig Hunt is it's horrendous characters.
What kind of hero, in a action/horror flick about a monster pig, looks down on weed?
The more and more I think about Pig Hunt, the more I just feel bad for it.
This movie certainly wasn't anything like I expected, yet I'm not quite sure whether that's a good thing or not.
Instead, "Pig Hunt" is a lot more ambitious than that (perhaps even too ambitious for its own good) and presents a miscellany of creature feature, hillbilly backwoods horror, slasher and even satanic cult horror.
The film starts traditionally enough, with a bunch of enthusiast friends (read = stereotypical twenty-something idiots that certainly don't belong in the woods) heading out to the Californian wilderness to go a-hunting for wild hogs.
The variety of sub plots made it very difficult for me personally to like "Pig Hunt", but I acknowledge that James Isaac (director of "Jason X" and late 80's guilty pleasure "House III") wanted to try something innovative and daredevil.
I like foaming hillbillies and naked lesbian hog-worshipers as much as the next guy, but here I wanted to see a big fat monster eating idiots from the city.
Even though the whole backwoods hillbilly horror thing has been done to death over the years, I never tire of toothless inbreds attacking any city-folk dumb enough to tray onto their turf; throw in a commune of marijuana farming, free loving hippies with a flesh-eating 3000lb mutant pig in their backyard and I'm in hog heaven!Jason X director James Isaac makes amends for his god-awful 2006 werewolf flick Skinwalkers by giving us one of the most enjoyable, bloody and fun films of recent years.
Pig Hunt might start in familiar territory, with its typically clichéd group of weekend warrior blokes (and token babe) wishing they had stayed at home after they upset the local rednecks, but it eventually carves its own identity with the introduction of its drug dealing love cult and their prodigious porker.
They actually help the "friends" on their hunting trip.While hunting, they run into many obstacles, including pot fields, crazy hippys, and insane hill people out for murder.Overall this was a fun watch.
We've got city boys going to the woods for a guys weekend of hunting, we've got the "unexpected" girlfriend tagging along, we've got an (apparently) inbred family of rednecks, we've got family drama, we've got a killer giant boar on the loose, and a Les Claypool cameo AND soundtrack.
Pig Hunt isn't a good movie, and it's not even particularly entertaining, but it's so wildly random that I probably wouldn't discourage anyone from watching it.ff.
is this a horror and does it contain pig hunting.
For the fans of the band Primus, Les Claypool made some tracks for this flick and is seen as the priest here in Pig Hunt.Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 1,5/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5.
Now, lots of people are going to die in some very disgusting ways.All the ones you don't like will be dispatched, and little piggies will roam the woods and grow into more killer pigs.Don't look for any great acting or witty writing, just sit back and enjoy the carnage..
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!
John Hickman(Travis Aaron Wade)puts together a hunting weekend for some of his San Francisco buddies that is suppose to be a guys-only thing; but somehow John's girlfriend Brooks(Tina Huang)is a tag-a-long.
Fine; John hustles the group off to his late uncle's property in the boondocks to hunt wild pigs.
This outing will not be a typical weekend trip...there will be hillbillies, hippies, massive marijuana fields, muddy wallows and the legend of a big ass 3,000 pound wild boar named "The Ripper".
From Jim Isaac, director of JASON X, comes what's almost certainly the wildest American horror film of the year.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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..
Pig Hunt is set in San Francisco where John Hickman (Travis Aaron Wade), his girlfriend Brooks (Tina Huang) & a couple of their friends have decided to go hunting in the great outdoors for the weekend, the four friends travel to John's dead uncle's cabin to prepare for the hunt.
Two local Hillbilly brother's Jake (Jason Foster) & Ricky (Nick Tagas) show up & offer to act as guides on a Pig hunt, rumours of a huge 3000lb Hog nicknamed 'Ripper' & 'Hogzilla' are used to add interest.
The hunters set out & venture deep into the forest where they find a marijuana crop, a group of lesbian hippies & discover that the rumours of a huge man eating Hog are in fact true...Co-produced & directed by James Isaac I must admit that I am not a fan of modern low budget horror & I really wasn't expecting much from Pig Hunt but I was surprised to find an oddball exploitation horror film that certainly has plenty going on even if it doesn't quite know how to juggle everything with total success.
There are lesbians, cult's, a weird Hog worshipping cult leader, Rednecks, car & bike stunts, Pig hunt's, drugs, nudity, gore, moral dilemmas, a giant mutant Hog monster & lots of backwoods brutality in a really odd mix of Deliverance (1972), Razorback (1984) & Wrong Turn (2003) that has so many things going on but the script doesn't really know how to bring them all together & the climax basically features anyone left alive in the same place with a giant monster Pig as it is finally revealed.
Pacing is a bit of a problem in Pig Hunt, at almost one hour & forty minutes it could have done with maybe a good ten minutes cut from it, it just takes a little bit too long to get going & certain sequences just go on for too long.
The character's are alright but I can't quite work out the Iraq war symbolism on show, from teens who aren't soldiers dressing up & acting like soldiers to hunt Pigs to John's uncle having lots of anti-Bush newspaper clippings in his cabin for no apparent reason.
There's also a fair bit of nudity at the end as an entire cult of women walk around naked.The IMDb says Pig Hunt had a budget of about $6,000,000 which I find hard to believe, there's no way this cost that much.
The acting is fine, the cast do a good if not amazing job.Pig Hunt is an odd film, it's a Redneck backwoods brutality film, a giant killer Pig film, a slasher thriller film that has lots going on if nothing else.
Summary: Creative horror premise, good gore factor and bonus points for possibly THE most random assortment of characters to ever hunt each other on screen..
John's uncle is killed by something fierce at the beginning of the movie which turns out to be a gigantic monstrous pig known as "the ripper".
John is using his uncle's land to camp on and old pals(he'd soon have avoided like the plague)from his childhood, dirty, foul hick brothers Jake(Jason Foster)and Ricky(Nick Tagas)impose themselves on the group.
Maybe, many viewers will not like the fact that it takes until the end before the giant pig is introduced, but Isaac tries to make up for this with the mayhem which erupts between the groups of John and Jake..
Because that's the only way I could explain how inbred, bible thumping rednecks could be smack dab right next to dope-smoking hippies who worship giant pigs for some reason.Smake dab into this mess comes our hero and his girlfriend, an Asian actress actually playing a character with a little depth and not a token or stereotype.
Never really explained why.But overall, this movie is overcrowded with too much stuff going on, few likable characters, and much of it seems like filler for the whole ten minutes the monster is on screen..
The movie pulls out all of the stops with stereotyped hillbillies, killer giant pig worshiping hippies, and a giant killing pig.
This movie will only appeal to people who well...want to see a 3,000 pound giant pig killing people.
In a lot of horror flicks like this, I don't see any human characters that deserve death.
In this movie there is between a guy that is about to kill someone just because the other guy tries to stop him from taking marijuana and the pig worshipers that treat the giant pig like a god to the point that they sacrifice people to him..
Second best pig movie.
The best pig movie is, of course, Razorback.
This one is a different pig movie.