Director: Martijn Smits
Year: 2025
Country: Netherlands
Alternate Titles: Vleesdag
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Desperate to make an impression, a woman trying to get involved in an animal-rights activist group leads them to a farm where they overtake the family that works there, but as the night progresses and each side battles for supremacy, it begins to take a toll as both groups struggle to survive.
Review:
Overall, this was a rather strong genre effort with a lot to like. One of the better factors with this one comes from the immensely strong and enjoyable setup that manages to talk candidly about a genuine problem as a pretense for getting the group into danger. The idea of the activist believing they’re in the right, taking out the owners of the farm for perceived cruelty to animals, and deciding to go after them to make sure their personal brand of justice is imposed, offers the kind of engrossing setup that gives everything that happens to them a strong purpose. When they decide to take action and sneak onto the property to carry out their plan and become successful enough to take the family hostage and begin working with their plans, it sets off a generally fun series of conflicts where it changes sides who’s allegiance to what side of the cruelty sphere people are going to fall on when each side takes hold of the situation to either stop the family from killing them or the family has the upperhand and dishing out punishment.
That is accomplished through a series of impressive stalking scenes that utilize their surroundings or the different motivations of the group at the time. With the early scenes of them taking over the house and holding them hostage trying to impart the idea of their determination to stop the slaughter of pigs against the family trying to justify everything, the whole thing becomes twisted nicely into a series of flip-flopping struggles for power that mean there’s some great brawls and tortures that go on with each side looking to escape their situation to get something happening for their side. That means plenty of high-energy confrontations and plenty of brutal, graphic encounters that are designed to mimic the treatment of pigs, which is quite nicely highlighted in the finale with the struggle to get to safety. The effective use of the great gore make-up that looks incredibly wet and graphic helps this significantly, and alongside the shocking twist ending that’s quite unexpected, these all provide the film with a lot to like.
There are a few slight drawbacks here to hold this one down. The most obvious issue here is the inability to connect with the activist on their mission, as everything they spout seems to be with the right intentions, but is told in the wrong context. These scenes show them operating under the guise of trying to understand what the family is doing to the pigs, but it soon turns into an idea of being cruel for the sake of being cruel, with how they target and torture the family without any kind of genuine proof that they’re doing anything wrong to warrant the intrusion in the first place. It goes against any kind of interest to see what’s happening to the shift in behavior since the ideology they spout to justify everything is so off-putting that it’s hard to get behind. The other slight drawback is how it tries to also paint the extreme jump to murder and torture from the family as the logical step, as that becomes somewhat of a large jump that never feels like it should be justified, which makes this feel unlikely as they hold it down.
Overview: ****/5
A truly enjoyable and likable Dutch slasher, this one gets quite a lot to like and only a few minor drawbacks, which are enough to keep it up as a solid genre effort. Those with an interest in the material are hardcore fans of this kind of brutal slasher, or those who are curious about it will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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