Guy Lodge Film CriticIn most films, the sight of a slaughtered human body — weighed down at the bottom of a public swimming pool with blood gushing from its wounds — would be the most stomach-churning thing in any given scene. “Piggy,” however, is not most films.
In Spanish writer-director Carlota Pereda’s striking psychological slasher, the image passes without comment in the background, so incidental that we briefly wonder if our eyes have deceived us.
For we’ve already been rattled by the real violence of the scene: plus-size teenager Sara (Laura Galán) being gleefully and relentlessly taunted by svelte mean-girl bullies, who then attempt drowning her with a pool net for extra laughs.
Small wonder Sara doesn’t notice the dead man in the water, or that we barely register it. Pereda’s viciously impressive debut uses standard genre shocks almost as macguffins; it’s the all-too-recognizable horror of brutalized adolescence that really makes us wince.
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