Director: Valeri Milev
Year: 2020
Country: Bulgaria
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Exploitation
Plot:
Living in a dystopian world, a man and his sister are part of a group of resistance fighters hunting down a race of pig-like creatures that have overtaken humanity and breeding them for cattle, and as their search takes them deeper into their underworld are forced to accept outlandish scenarios to try to survive.
Review:
This is a pretty solid and enjoyable exploitation outing. Among its more enjoyable aspects is the immediate matter that this one drops us into this depraved world as everything is given to us rather early on. With the opening confrontation in the streets leading to the revelation about what happened involving their world getting overthrown by the manipulation of the pig-creatures and holding mankind to be fed like they used to be as well as the need for resisting their advances, it wraps everything up in an incredibly swift manner. Getting the entire purpose of their fighting where they are forced to look for the main pig-creature producing more offspring which is a fine inversion of the relationship humans have with pigs in the real world is a great touch here.
As well, there’s so much to like with the action-packed setting this provides. That opening shootout in the streets has some solid firepower and stunt-work featured in addition to the fiery action on display and sets the tone for the over-the-top nature to be featured throughout here. From there, it gets even crazier with the jungle ambush by the creatures where they wipe out the ground troops walking through the series of traps only to get taken out by the swarm of creatures lying in ambush around them in spectacularly brutal fashion. The scenes of them overtaking the meat-farm which offers up plenty of fun as they deploy not only stealth and trickery but brute firepower to overcome their overwhelming numbers in a nice bit of team-work that displays tons of carnage alongside the bloodied bodies strewn around that are being cut up for the creatures. As well as the fine exploitation elements with tons of nudity and a willingness to get messy, there’s a lot to like here.
There are some issues to be had with this one. Among its biggest drawbacks is the fact that this one tends to switch around plotlines and allegiances so much that it’s hard to tell what’s going on at times. With so much going on, with the reunited siblings, the search for the queen pig-creature in the middle of a massive war between the various sides of the resistance and then introducing time-travel, dreams involving a flamboyant model that tends to switch sides and meeting his dead father continuously throughout the film, there’s just so much going on that it’s incredibly easy to lose track of everything and become confused. This one really could’ve been streamlined and made less confusing by dropping some of the extraneous storylines and concentrated on only a few of those to be less of an issue. Combined with a wholly unsatisfying and cheap-jack ending that feels as if it ran out of money to do anything and sets itself up for a sequel, these are what lower this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A glorious exploitation throwback that revels in so much that’s worthwhile about the genre yet still manages a few shortcomings in the storytelling aspects, this one features a lot to like while still having a couple of drawbacks. There’s a lot here that fans of modern grindhouse throwbacks films or those intrigued by the reputation will like here although most others will have a lot to dislike here.
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