Dir. Chris Sun (2017)
An enormous boar stalks teens on a walking trail in the Outback.
The first time I decided to do a Nature Week, way back in 2022 (which feels like it was about six years ago), it was inspired by films exactly like the one we're going to talk about today. Animal Attack horror films are so much fun, and it doesn't even particularly matter what type of animal is doing the attacking. There are plenty of great horror films with alligators, bees, crocodiles, and other animals that start with sequential letters of the alphabet. While each of these animals are scary in their own right, very few of them pose any significant danger to people outside of extreme circumstances. Boars, or wild pigs, are a bit of a different beast. Ask anyone who lives in a place where they're common and they'll tell you that they're mean, ornery creatures who are so damn hard to kill that you often have to shoot them in the face just to stun them before finishing them off at close range. Naturally, this sort of beast lends itself perfectly to horror, as we see in this 2017 homage (of sorts) to the 1984 Ozploitation cult classic Razorback.
Married couple Debbie (Simone Buchanan) and Bruce (Bill Mosely) are taking their kids Bart (Griffin Walsh) and Ella (Christie-Lee Britten), along with Ella's boyfriend Robert (Hugh Sheridan), to visit Debbie's brother, a mountain of a man named Bernie (Nathan Jones). They take a day trip to the lake, and when Bernie decides to investigate a couple of men who were camping overnight in the Outback, the family discovers that there's an enormous wild pig on the loose. As the boar tears through campers like tissue paper, the family is in, you guessed it, a fight to survive.
Some pretty impressive effects highlight a monster movie of the enlarged pork variety. There are some truly excellent scenes of animalistic carnage in this one, and though the whole thing is more than a little silly, the kills alone make this one a must see for fans of animal attack horror. The titular boar itself is not particularly well done, though I do give massive kudos to the filmmakers for making a practical animatronic monster as the star of their show (though it does utilize some CGI during the more brutal scenes). It's a creature feature through and through, and thankfully doesn't take itself too seriously. Director Chris Sun knew what he was doing when he made this one, choosing to make a ridiculous and fun over-the-top gorefest of a creature feature and largely knocking it out of the park.
The script is Australian Rob Zombie-esque, filled with explicit sexual language and copious amounts of swearing that often feels like the characters within are teens who just learned most of these words and wants to one-up their friends. That's hardly a complaint, of course: Australians are not particularly known for watching their manners, and the characters in this film are no different. The irreverence of the dialogue really helps to set the tone of the film as well, making sure that the audience knows that this film eschews good taste for a little porcine ultraviolence instead. And violent it most certainly is.
Pictured: Violence
Despite their fearsome reputation, wild hogs are generally nothing you need to worry yourself about (unless you're talking about the 2007 comedy starring Tim Allen, John Travolta, and Martin Lawrence in a terrible movie with batshit insane casting choices). They're fairly docile, and unless you're threatening their kids, you're probably gonna be alright. Make them as big as a house and with five foot long tusks, however, and you're gonna have a major problem on your hands. Boar plops one of these creatures in the Australian Outback and spends the vast majority of its budget on super-fun mayhem, and if you're a fan of creature features (or pigs, I guess), this one is definitely for you.
Who this movie is for: Creature feature fans, Australian horror buffs, Bacon lovers
Bottom line: Boar is ridiculous over-the-top creature feature fun, plain and simple. What it lacks in script it more than makes up for in gore, just a good old fashion indie animal horror that hearkens back to Ozploitation flicks of the past. There's plenty of violence, hilarious dialogue, some excellent creature effects, and if you're a fan of animal attack horror films, you're probably going to love this one. It's streaming on Shudder right now, and you should definitely give it a look.
