Several filmmakers have successfully expanded their horror shorts into feature films. Sam Raimi did it with Within The Woods, which ultimately became The Evil Dead. Takashi Shimizu started out with In A Corner, then graduated to Ju-On: The Grudge. Before there was the franchise juggernaut Saw, there was Saw 0.5, a super low-budget shocker from James Wan and Leigh Whannell. Jennifer Kent first explored grief and trauma with Monster, then dug even deeper into the theme with The Babadook. Now we can add Piggy to this list.
Writer-director Carlota Pereda released the thirteen-minute short in 2018 (you can watch it in full at the YouTube channel of its distributor, Alter). It tells the story of Sara (Laura Galán), a plus-size teen going for a swim at an empty pool – or so she thinks. A strange man bursts up to the surface of the water just as Sara is about to wade in, and, chillingly, he just stares at her. But just as Pereda has the audience thinking this is a narrative about the dangers of men lurking and preying on unsuspecting women, she yanks the rug out from under us by introducing three of Sara’s peers, who taunt and tease her and call her “Piggy.” The man leaves, but the girls persist in tormenting Sara, going so far as to grab a pool net to repeatedly force her underwater, bloodying her nose and nearly drowning her in the process. To top it off, they steal her clothes and phone, forcing the already self-conscious and now thoroughly mortified Sara to walk home in her bikini.
While on the road, a group of young men chase after Sara, mocking her with giddy cruelty, bringing the theme of dangerous men back to the forefront. One of the guys even grabs at her a bit before they finally take off again – just a “bit of fun” for them, though of course Sara is further traumatized by the ordeal. Distraught, she darts down a dirt path, where she comes across a creepy white van driven by the strange man from the pool. He stops to stare at her again, and while idling, a bloodied hand pops up and slaps the van’s back window. Turns out, he’s kidnapped the mean girls, who scream for Sara to help them. But after the man drops Sara’s things for her to retrieve, she just waves him on, doing nothing to stop whatever terrible fate he has in store for her peers.
The full-length film, also titled Piggy, made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022, and also screened as part of 2022’s deadCenter UndeadCenter block of programming. Pereda effectively recreates the short film in its entirety, using its narrative plus a few extra details as her first act. Galán returns as Sara, and her performance is just as vulnerable and breathtaking here as in the short. The rest of the film explores the consequences of Sara’s actions, as the town slowly realizes three girls are missing and there is a serial killer in their midst. Pereda further establishes Sara’s isolation – she spends most of her free time either studying or working in her family’s butcher shop. She also endures emotional abuse from her mother (Carmen Machi, delivering an equally superb performance), who fat shames and picks at her daughter to no end, at one point even refusing to give her anything more than a salad for dinner so that she’ll lose weight.
Given Sara’s lonely and torturous world, is it any wonder that when the mysterious man from the pool (here played by Richard Holmes and credited only as Desconocido, or “Unknown”) resurfaces and begins lavishing Sara with sweets and attention, she’s genuinely tempted to go with him into his dark, torturous world, one where she gets to inflict pain, rather than endure it?
Stephen King’s Carrie and the film adaptation from Brian de Palma should immediately come to mind here: both stories feature a bullied girl with an overbearing mother driven to vengeance. Except that Pereda isn’t interested in rehashing the same old plot points seen in dozens of Carrie knock-offs over the last several decades. She has her own surprises in store, and they speak directly to the more nuanced conversation about bullying and the violent actions of the “mentally ill” dominating modern discourse. The film’s climax may at first feel off-kilter with the rest of the narrative, but upon reflection, it perfectly caps off Pereda’s examination of the true nature of monstrousness.
And this is precisely why the expansion of her Piggy narrative from short to feature works so well. Pereda takes a pathos-laden, punchy horror sting and transforms it into a more well-rounded emotional journey for both her protagonist and her audience. Much like Raimi, Shimizu, Kent, Wan, and Whannell before her, Pereda’s future in the genre is bright.
Find more deadCenter 2022 coverage at The Cinematropolis.
