Our story starts as we witness some grizzly-looking activities on the pig farm where the animals are being fattened for slaughter and sale. A young girl, Mirthe, schoolfriend of the farmer's son Jonathan, gets taken on part time by his dad to help out so she can earn some cash. Little did they know, however, that she had designs on exposing the farm as a place acting outside the law in terms of their practices and being cruel to the livestock.
One day, the family catch her filming the alleged cruelty on her mobile phone, fire her, smash up (what they think is) the phone in question and sling her off the premises. Jonathan is upset because he had, since school, had a bit of a crush on young Mirthe. Anyway, next thing we know is that she's reporting into the local Animal Activist group via what appears to be her boyfriend, though she seems to be more interested in a place within the group than by his side.
The group is led by Nas and Ish, a couple of ruthless and seemingly bonkers individuals who appear to be capable of stopping at nothing in order to meet the aims of the group. So they form a posse and head for the farm, pig-masks on faces! They swoop in, in order to generally disrupt things, initially by spraying slogans on the walls of the farm. However, things soon get out of hand as we see what the nutty Nas and Ish are capable of! One of the group checks out the house and finds a little girl upstairs in bed, surrounded by bottles of medicine, clearly very unwell. Neither of these characters play a huge part, but we find out later why they are there!
This is the point at which it turns into a complete bloodbath as gruesome and grizzly scenes follow each other, group tackling the family running the farm - with dad turning out to be the most bonkers of the lot! The pigs are used as weapons against the invaders along with pretty much any piece of farm machinery the family can lay their hands on. Most of the characters at one time or another end up being tortured by the other side, strung up, marmalised and treated with acid and it becomes a bit of a survival film as we wonder who is going to make it to the end, breathing, and who is going to have their life hacked away by those around them!
It's all good horror/terror fun of course but it's really taking itself seriously in the quest! There's no tongues-in-cheeks here and everyone's in it for the gore, guts, blood and flying body parts! The first half of the film is actually pretty slow, feels quite low-budget (which it probably is) - and much like someone's hired a farm, a dozen unknown actors and a special effects team to play out an idea. But actually, when the tone switches to the more macabre and dark about halfway through the 90 minutes, it suddenly feels much better. The director who I've never heard of, Martijn Smits, seems to draw more convincing acting out of everyone, especially Caro Derkx and Emma Josten in the leads, as they head towards the blood-soaked finale.
It's a completely bonkers gore-fest, but hang on in there for it to kick up a gear part way through. I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought very much of Mason Verger and Hannibal in this kind of setting. I'm sure you'll get the reference and meaning there! Enjoy! At them moment if you're not in the USA you'll need to try some VPN style trickery to get to see it, available there via various streaming services.
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