A Canadian cannibal documentary Man Bites Dog-style? Sign me UHHHP!!
So Long Pigs concerns Anthony McAllistair, a cannibalistic serial killer who lets two filmmakers (always in quotation marks in the film) follow and document his life and killings. It's undeniably chilling; one of my big complaints about cannibal movies is how long it takes for them to tell the audience what they've already figured out (to wit: THEY EAT PEOPLE) but this film tucks right in: fifteen minutes have elapsed and I've already learned to tie off the anus of the next overweight prostitute I prep for Thanksgiving. There's also a great sped-up sequence where Anthony turns a victim into freezer stock to The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies. And the guy they got for the role is dead on; he plays the courteous cannibal with a terrifying calm.
Maybe it's too much like an actual documentary for its own good. There really isn't much of a narrative- none of the scenes really build up to anything. Bookending the footage of Anthony's life are dialogues from a late-night radio host and interviews with a police detective and a serial killer profiler, but they never truly gel. When the profiler mentions how "visionary" serial killers are the most dangerous of all- yet Tony neither has nor develops airs over what he does- we begin to believe that arbitrary roles have been given out to friends of the filmmakers. Speaking of which, if you're going to make a mockumentary, you might want to get some older actors... The detective can't be more than 30, so "in all my years on the police force" got a chuckle. Tony's Alzheimer's-afflicted mother in the nursing home (a subplot that goes nowhere) is only glimpsed between the shoulders of restraining orderlies for a very good reason- and her doctor! I hope he's aware that they're filming on a school night!
This is all nitpicking however; the performances are quite strong and Long Pigs pulls off a lot from its meager budget. 4/5 kittens in the pig entrails.
1 comment:
spoiler alert- the mom subplot *did* in fact go somewhere; in the end credits they say the autopsy revealed it was kreutzfeldt-jacob syndrome (i think i got the nme right) aka "mad cow" and they basically insinuated that she probably got it from eating human brains. thus making our cannibal someone who was taught this from an early age. too bad the movie just tossed that in at the last second. the profiler being all wrong about almost everything didn't bug me, i felt it was done on purpose to kind of show how he managed to stay under the radar. although speaking of "under the radar" how the hell did the filmmakers find this guy in the first place? fucking craigslist? "looking for cannibal serial killer to make a widely distributed movie of you killing and eating people" yeah. that works.
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