It seems there’s a film festival for every taste these days. Whatever genre, subgenre, or sub-subgenre you adopt for your movie, you can guarantee that somewhere out there waits the perfect jury panel, one that, perhaps due to a lack of quality programming or pre-viewing indulgences, chooses to look positively upon your creation. Such a convergence of inexplicable contrivances must have occurred at the Anatomy: Crime and Horror Film Festival in 2022 as Chad Ferrin’s Pig Killer, a biopic of one of Canada’s most prolific serial killers, won five awards, which feels like a lot for a film lacking any true redeeming characteristics.
The subject itself is, in a macabre way, an interesting one. Robert ‘Willy’ Pickton was convicted of murdering six women – and is connected to 43 more – at his pig farm in British Columbia, Canada. He held wild parties, supplied drugs, had a questionable relationship with his mother and is suspected of cannibalism. Pickton’s motivations, crimes and subsequent arrest are all intriguing, but instead, Ferrin has focused rather voyeuristically on the more lurid aspects of the story, alleged or otherwise. Pickton fantasising about sex with his mother – played by former porn star Ginger Lynn in one graphically disturbing moment – and prolonged focus on other rather grubby sex scenes fill out the ludicrously long two-hour running time.
Portraying Pickton as a damaged, often confused sociopath, Jake Busey does his best with the material, bringing an erratic, fevered portrayal to a difficult, somewhat flimsily written role. But there are few other positives. Gratefully reaching the end credits, you may feel an urge to shower, but perhaps that is what Ferrin intended.
PIG KILLER is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the US.
