Content warning: This review contains discussions of fatphobia and assault.
More than any other genre, horror is often concerned with the violation of the human body. The genre is famously home to slashers with bloody kill counts in the dozens or even hundreds, monsters who maim and disfigure, and body horror that examines grotesque violations and/or mutations of the human form. You would think that this focus on the terror of bodily harm would make horror a perfect home for fat protagonists. Existing as a fat person means that the world feels entitled to your body. Loved ones and strangers alike think they have the right to comment on your appearance, your presumed exercise and eating habits, your sex life, your health. Anything and everything about you and your body is open for discussion and debate — even unwanted physical touch or sexual assault — simply by virtue of you living as a fat person. Unfortunately, rather than interrogating the horrors of fatphobia, the horror genre often perpetuates them, making fat characters the comic relief and reserving the coveted Final Girl role (and most other roles, for that matter) for thin women.
Imagine my excitement, then, when Sundance announced the premiere of Piggy, writer-director Carlota Pereda’s horror film with a young fat woman as its protagonist. The promotional image — star Laura Galán standing in the middle of the road with blood-soaked clothes and a thousand-yard stare, her stomach exposed and her mouth smeared with someone else’s blood — drew me in immediately. Was she a killer? A victim? Both? It is a defiant visual statement. The single-point perspective of the converging guardrails on either side of Galán force the viewer to focus on her, a woman with a body type that usually isn’t the focal point in film. But there’s also a painful vulnerability to Galán’s pose and expression. She is exposed, open to further harm or ridicule, and you can’t help wondering about both the trauma she’s already been subjected to and the trauma that still lies ahead for her. This single image invites many questions and elicits conflicting emotions, and that ambiguity carries through in the film itself.
Piggy is a morally and psychologically complex film about the consequences of bullying and fatphobia; a traumatic story that refuses easy catharsis but feels innately true. Sara (Galán) works at her family’s butcher shop over the summer, watching her thin peers through the window as they laugh and flirt. When Sara goes to the local pool to swim — strategically, she tries to go when no one else is there to see her in a bikini — Maca (Claudia Salas) and Roci (Camille Aguilar) show up and taunt her mercilessly. They oink and curse at her and throw a net over her head, almost drowning her in the process. When the girls grow tired of their bullying, they steal Sara’s clothes and run away, convincing Sara’s former friend Claudia (Irene Ferreiro) to do the same. Sara has to walk home in her bikini, sobbing and fighting off a car full of abusive young men along the way. When she is nearly home, she sees a white van with Claudia screaming for help in the back. The driver (Richard Holmes) drops a towel out of the car for Sara to cover up with, and after they exchange a tense, knowing look, the driver pulls away with Sara’s bullies in tow. Sara makes it home and tells no one about what she saw, and the majority of the movie deals with Sara’s guilt (or lack thereof) as the town searches for Maca, Roci, and Claudia.
Piggy inverts slasher tropes, front-loading the danger we typically think of in these movies — conventionally attractive girls in peril — and offering its traditional scares in subtle, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fashion. The deeper scares come from the way the entire village treats Sara. No one has ever lifted a finger to stop the bullying she faces at the hands of the popular girls. They post pictures on Instagram calling Sara a pig, earning likes rather than reproval. They share videos of their torture and bullying with their group chat. When Sara tells her mother Asun (Carmen Machi) in public that the girls bully her and Asun does nothing about it, she hisses at Sara to shut up and stop lying. Later that day, she puts Sara on a diet. Everything is about appearances, and Sara’s appearance marks her as a free target for every bit of hate and spite that lives within the villagers.
Piggy is raw and upsetting. As I was taking notes during the film, I wrote that Galán’s performance is “fearless.” But I had to stop and ask myself why it was. Was I responding to her spending so much time on-screen as a fat woman in a bikini? Was I allowing my insecurities about my own body to color my perception of her acting? I didn’t want to perpetuate the idea that it takes (or should take) more bravery to show a fat body than a thin one, but neither did I want to downplay Galán’s achievements out of fear that I was simply projecting. That’s the insidiousness of fatphobia: I wrestled with my reasons for praising Galán, who gives a legitimately fearless and visceral performance, because I didn’t want to harm her by praising her for the wrong reasons. Sara’s anguish and rage is palpable; she has put up with so much for so long, and no one has been there to help her. When she finally lets those emotions out, you feel the pain and anger roiling at her core. I would have forgiven Sara for any path she chose, yet I was surprised by the film’s ending, and I have to contend with the implications of my reaction to her choices.
Though Piggy inverts the traditional horror narrative, it loses none of the tension of a standard slasher or thriller. It is a fascinating film with a captivating protagonist who owns her place at the center of the narrative. This is not a movie about the unnamed killer or the village bullies; this is a movie about Sara. When introducing the film during the festival, Carlota Pereda said, “I don’t especially like when directors explain the movie to me before I watch it, because they kill all possibilities of different meanings.” Even if I were inclined to explain the movie in this review, I don’t know that I could, because I have been wrestling with Piggy ever since I finished it. It is a remarkable film that deserves attention. It is not remarkable for its star’s appearance (or rather, it should not be remarkable for that); what it is remarkable for is its unflinching honesty and its refusal to give the viewer an easy way out. Just like that stark image of Sara covered in blood, Piggy forces the viewer to focus on her and grapple with difficult questions that deserve answers.
