New streaming on Screambox from ND Pictures!
Directed by Martijn Smits.
Written by Paul de Vrijer.
Check out the trailer here!!
A group of activists, including Nasha (Emma Josten) who used to work in a pig farm undercover to expose them for abuse, descend upon said pig farm in order to cause mayhem and convey their message that meat is murder. Once there, they find the pigs have already been cleared out for slaughter and are caught at gunpoint by the pig farmer and his family. Now the group must try to survive before the pig farmer makes meals out of the lot of them.
Now you all know that I’m a sucker for inbred killer family flicks. It goes back to my love of Texas Chainsaw Saw Massacre where a family forms a sort of system in order for their bizarre unit to survive. That’s where I thought this Dutch horror flick was going to go as the activists, adorned with plastic pig masks, enter the pig farm, armed only with cell phones and spray paint. But instead of the usual TCM tropes, MEAT KILLS surprised me by becoming a battle of wits between two different sides that you find yourself flipping between rooting for them to survive and then wishing for their deserved demises.
MEAT KILLS is a film that plays with your own morality. Do I want to see pigs slaughtered? No. But I do love me some bacon on my burgers and that honey glazed ham on Turkey Day is quite scrumptious. So right off the bat, I was conflicted when we opened on the slaughterhouse. Thankfully, only one pig is slaughtered in the opening moments, and it goes by quickly, though this is the point of many heated conversations in MEAT KILLS, so the subject of abusing animals set for slaughter is ever present.
I don’t want to say that I don’t support activism or the right to protest. I do. But I think am not the only one who is sick of the protest culture of the moment as it gathers the worst and most extreme of us and a bunch of angry anything is dangerous. That’s why it’s hard to root for these activists who lay siege on the farm. What I absolutely hate is someone enforcing their will and beliefs upon other people. That’s exactly what the activists in MEAT KILLS do and it makes it hard to root for them even though they are supposed to be playing the role of the victims here. Not only that, but in this series of murders, the activists are equally at fault, showing their hypocrisy that they find murdering a human ok since it suits their cause. In the grand scheme of things, it is the activists who draw first blood in MEAT KILLS. So, when Poppa Pig Farmer (Bart Oomen) shows up to find his home and farm ransacked, his family tortured, and one of his own murdered, it’s pretty understandable that he’s pissed and wanting some revenge. What unfolds is a war between two warring parties who find themselves trapped in conflict until the last one is standing.
The back-and-forth carnage is intense as every tool of slaughter within reach is used by both activist and farmer alike. People are scalded in boiling water, electrocuted, run over by machinery, and hacked to bits with cleavers, meat hooks, and handheld circular saws. This is a gory one and not for the squeamish. Still, the gore seems justified and gets worse as the battle goes on and tempers flare brighter. There’s a point to this gruesome spectacle, more so than just to stack up a body count.
If you’re a fan of films like TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and the like, this is one for you. But it is deeper than simply bloody and murder. It shows the ugliness within us all. MEAT KILLS is especially timely given the culture we are all living in now. And though few on either political or activist aisle will take this film as a moral lesson, I think it should. Full of moments where it could go either way as to who comes out on top and who should, MEAT KILLS is a gruesome, yet complex little slaughterhouse nightmare.
