Blood Pigs (2010)

Brian Paulin has definitely made a fan out of me with his low-budget, highly ambitious and ultra gory films such as "Bone Sickness" and "Fetus". "Blood Pigs" would fall behind both of these flicks in my personal rankings of his films that I have seen thus far, however, making for a much saddening disappointment.

The premise here takes place following a zombie apocalypse where people are succumbing to a humanity destroying chemical contaminant found in the meat of the undead they are forced to eat to survive. Their insides start to mutate and turn them into psychotic cannibals...

As cool as this concept is, it's really not conveyed in a particularly strong way within what we're given on screen. Much of my understanding of the movie's set-up I derived from reading the back of the DVD while the movie, itself, carries on mundanely with several stragglers bumping into the occasional zombie and sword fighting in the woods. People bitched about Paulin's previous undead outing, "Bone Sickness", being boring, though, to me, that flick is a mile-a-minute splatter classic compared to this one, which really doesn't start 'moving' until the final 15-minutes or so when the blood finally starts flowing. It just felt like pointless time killing up until then, with unlikeable, undeveloped characters swapping sleep-inducing dialog and wandering around. Also, there was an obvious technical issue involving the film's frame rate (which is addressed on Morbid Vision Films' site) where a flickering lag is seen during the faster action scenes. It's not worth beating them up over, but it IS pretty annoying at times. The film's end climax, however, is pretty on point and is obviously where the bulk of production's resources went in creating some incredibly nasty and badass gore and creatures. This is where Paulin shines as he pretty much single-handedly constructs these gruesome effects and I have to commend him for his eye for disgusting bloodshed (asshole ripping and spinal fluid drinking, anyone??). If only this could've been spread out a little more throughout the rest of the movie I think it definitely could've helped out the pacing. "Blood Pigs" is certainly not Morbid Visions' best work (that would still have to be "Fetus"), though I'll still continue to support a grass roots splatter film-maker like Brian Paulin. Whether you love or hate what he's doing, you can't deny the heart behind these films.