Holland Road Massacre: The Legend of Pigman (2020) User Reviews

Low budget slasher with high concept

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 5 January 2022]

In my town, there were urban legends of the Green Man - which were true, he was burned by either a fallen power line or lightning strike and his face was destroyed - and every town has similar tales. This movie has the Pigman, which a couple soon discovers is an absoutely true and very deadly story.

This movie seems engineered for optimum murderdrone, but I'm not sure that's a thing you can just make up. It's like trying to give yourself your own nickname. But the slow motion snow-based murders that are stuttered and cross-cut and smashed together and the multiple storylines all happening at once are all going to try.

That said, Holland Road in Angola, NYis really called Pigman Road because of an urban legend. Turns out that there may have been - but probably wasn't - a deranged butcher that would put pigs' heads on stakes outside his shop before one time that he shot a man and hung him outside for cars driving past to see. There was also a major train accident in the 1860s.

Director and writer Emir Skalonj is behind this one. There are some ideas at play here, the killer looks pretty good and it has a budget of what you spent on Christmas gifts this year. You can learn more on the official Facebook page.

Watchable if somewhat underwhelming slasher

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 5/10 · 30 April 2020]

Heading out on a road-trip together, a couple trying to see if the stories are real involving the local legend of a pig-masked killer roaming the woods nearby, but when a series of incidental victims also happen upon the area they all learn the truth about the legend of the Pigman killer and must try to get away alive.

For the most part, this one wasn't that bad of a genre effort. Among it's better qualities is the unsettling nature created here by the main killer which generates some fun slashing scenes. The first kill in the driving snow where his motionless stance and intensity looking at the victim attempt to snatch pictures of him looks great with the snow bouncing off the mask and then the killing blow which is quite brutal and graphic. Other scenes, including a hiker getting ambushed and chopped up with the ax, a fun and lengthy sequence of fleeing victims trying to get away through the woods and a battle in the snow with survivors of several groups encountering the killer, offer some fun chasing and stalking alongside the solid indie-flavored gore from the killer. As well, the film also manages to become quite fun once it's obvious that the switching series of focus on the various people stumbling upon the hunting site is the entire purpose here. With four separate storylines at play here, with the couple investigating the urban legend, the officer investigating the missing people in the area, one traveler passing through and then the group of volunteers looking to take in the legend for themselves, there's a random nature at work here that is somewhat disjointed at first. However, once it becomes obvious that each of the storylines are converging on the killer's hunting spot which not only provides extra bodies to chop up but sets up the final battle with the killer at the end. These end up being the films' best parts that hold it up in the end. There are a few issues with this one. One of the biggest factors is the bizarre editing techniques employed during the attack scenes which make for a jarring, distracting experience. With the scenes continually shot in slow-motion takes with criss-cross editing for a stuttering, fractured style that tends to make it somewhat difficult to fully get the idea across of what's happening, which stands out even more since these are where the film is trying to sell itself with the outcome of the killers' attacks when done in conjunction with odd extreme close-ups on various body parts. It makes for some sloppy and somewhat underwhelming scenes where it's not that easy to tell what's going on here. Carrying on from that, the other issue here is a series of weird storyline beats that just make this look amateurish. The storyline switching is chaotic and random with no introduction to anybody or their purpose leaving no clue who anyone is or their purpose, a series of random edits that jerk around to various individual storylines so that scenes just end with no explanation and very much coming across like a random series of actions happening in the same general area. Combined with some character mistakes, these here hold the film down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Messy, But Not in the Right Ways

[FilmFatale · 4/10 · 3 February 2024]

Holland Road Massacre: The Legend of Pigman tells what should be the simple and straightforward tale of the urban legend of a guy known as Pigman who inhabits the area around Holland Road and kills people who invade his territory, resulting in a massacre. I guess it mostly does, but HRM goes about things in such a strange and choppy way that it just doesn't feel like much of a massacre.

The viewer is plunked into the middle of things from the get-go, with a creepy older man picking up a body from the Pigman, since Pigman "doesn't keep" all of his victims. It's implied that the old man has his own fun with the leftovers. Then a bunch of characters are thrown into the movie, some to just be killed and some who end up with connections to other characters but those connections aren't set up well. This leaves it up to the viewer to piece relationships together with very little info. There's also an overlong "getting ready to go" montage that wastes time and goodwill. The kills are weird too; edited in such a way that we never really get a single good one. Usually, we see a victim just standing there - cut to Pigman - tight shot of hatchet - Pigman swings hatchet - victim grimaces in closeup - shot of blood splashing on snow - and on to the next one. Since the acting ranges from bad to hammy, it's hard to see any of these characters as real people.

HRM isn't entirely bad, though. You can actually feel the cold air of the exterior shots, and there's a delightful bleakness to the whole affair. I just wish there had been more time spent exploring the nastiness that's always bubbling just under the surface.

A return to the old school

[rareformatcomics · 9/10 · 28 May 2020]

I'm a fan of low.budget horror films. This is a refreshing memory of thenold.slashers. 100% recommend...