My weekend was filled with a 4-flick marathon of movies featuring humans with animalistic tendencies, so let’s sink our teeth into them.
SHARK GIRL (2024)
I really expected this one to be some sort of trashy, indie mess, but the film takes itself seriously and is actually a pretty sleek production. Any elements of camp are simply embedded in the fact that it’s a movie about a young woman with shark-like tendencies.
A pretty influencer is pressured by her douche bag boyfriend/manager with great hair to go into the ocean so he can take photos for her channel. Her paranoia as she is told to go deeper is quite effectively shot both below and above the water level, and it definitely felt like a nod to the opening scene of Jaws.
However, we never see a shark. She disappears, the boyfriend goes home because he doesn’t give a shit, and then she’s found at night washed up on the shore by a couple hanging out at the beach.
The film wastes no time in introducing “shark girl”. Before the couple can help her, she attacks! However, shark girl never turns into a shark hybrid. She simply flashes savage teeth and bites her victims in the neck.
As she continues her feeding frenzy throughout the movie (mostly attacking those that wrong her), the oddest thing about it is that there are all these reports of shark attacks, yet she’s biting people with a human-sized mouth and teeth, so any expert should be able to see the bites aren’t the work of a shark.
Anyway, it’s sexy and fun as she racks up kills, but the movie does start to lose some steam as we meet the other characters along the way—a cute reporter she went to school with, and her best friend, who is investigating contamination in the water. Naturally they team up to stop shark girl in the end.
The only disappointment is that they go to a kooky scientist surfer dude for advice on how to stop her, yet this quirky character doesn’t join in on the final act like Quint did in Jaws. He could have added some fun to the mix during the final battle.
The highlight of the film is that after talk about stopping her with a serum, in the end it’s a good old harpoon gun that saves the day. Awesome.
FROGMAN (2023)
Frogman gets down to basics in the found footage genre—it follows the template of Blair Witch with one exception—it delivers camptastic frogman horror at the end. No movie has delivered such a great frog finale since The Maze.
Like many found footage flicks, this one begins with an urban legend. The frogman was caught on video in the 90s by a couple of kids. Now, the guy who was behind the camera as a kid wants to save his reputation, for he’s been mocked online as a fraud.
So, how to prove he didn’t fake the video? Go hunt down the frogman, of course. Our main guy gathers some friends to go with him, grabs his camera, and they’re off to the infamous location where the frogman has been spotted.
They interview locals, check out memorabilia, explore touristy hot spots, and eventually head into the woods to find the frogman.
It takes an hour, but when the frogman shows up, he practically leaps off the screen! We get frogman attacks, people being slimed and then suffering wart breakouts, a cult that worships the frogman, and a giant tongue attack.
This is all the cheesy good creature feature found footage payoff you could ask for.
The only surprise is the incredibly anticlimactic ending, which concludes with two too many survivors. Perhaps there’s a reason for that…like…Frogman 2?
PIGMAN (2024)
I’m usually a fan of director Louisa Warren’s British indie horror flicks, but this one was just not my thing at all…other than the violent and bloody kills and the killer’s potato sack pig mask.
No, the Pigman is not a deformed beast. It’s just a human in a mask. Speaking of humans, the movie runs too long and focuses too much on human issues…really shitty humans at that.
A group of content creators decides to come to an old farm to expose the truth about the Pigman myth. As usual, these online fauxlebrities are the worst of humanity, especially the dude leading the charge. He is flippant and cruel with victims of the supposed Pigman and even abusive to his girlfriend. There’s no one to root for or like in this film.
The Pigman’s backstory is bland, and the movie drags on as it tries to add complexity to the plot…a plot that simply needs to be about a guy in a pig mask sack hacking up horrible people.
PIGLET (2025)
Like Pigman, Piglet starts with a psycho with a sack on his head, but it’s merely a plain mask. After some quick and vicious opener kills, he finds a pig mask and slips it on, which means we never get to see his face! What the hell?
The plot is basic. A group of girls goes to party at a cabin in the woods, and soon they are being dragged off one by one to Piglet’s lair to be brutally murdered.
It begins with a sex scene between a guy and a girl in the woods getting slaughtered. Yay! Now that’s my kind of backwoods horror.
In the cabin, the girls have their little spats, they sit around talking about the legend of Piglet, two girls soak in the hot tub, a lesbian kiss…you know, the usual.
The score is pretty good and reminds me of the music from Phantasm, the gore is good (although at one point you can see a hook is made of rubber because it’s bouncing), and the main girl takes her final girl responsibilities seriously and delivers on the screams and the final fight.
Piglet offers up a perfect backwoods killer vibe, and the tone is nice and gritty. However, it essentially decides to go the “backwoods family” route. Therefore, Piglet isn’t working alone. It isn’t really necessary, adds nothing to the straightforward plot, and makes some of what happens fairly predictable. It is definitely a backwoods slasher cookie cutter situation, so you could say this is comfort horror for those that love this subgenre.
