We are not defined by who the world says we are. We make that choice ourselves. But for bullied kids, that choice becomes blurred. You think you’re one thing, yet when others repeat over and over again that you’re something else, the truth becomes obscured. Am I “normal”, or am I “broken”? Am I good, or am I bad? Who am I, really? Horror films in the “Revenge of the Bullied” sub-genre tend to slice into these questions with end results that are difficult to digest. Carlota Pereda’s recently released Piggy is the exception.
An expansion on Pereda’s short Cerdita, Piggy follows an overweight teen named Sara (Laura Galán) who works at her family’s butcher shop in a small village. The other kids call her Piggy. Her childhood friend Claudia (Irene Ferreiro) has abandoned her for social status. Sara’s own mother (Carmen Machi) adds to the torment by criticizing her at every opportunity. Despite living with a family of four in a small town where everyone knows each other, Sara is alone. Until one day she happens upon a killer kidnapping Claudia and two other girls and makes a choice: Why help them if they wouldn’t help me?
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Kids have a gift for finding our insecurities and ripping them out into the open. For me, it was a bad case of Rosacea when I was younger. Calling me Cherry Face was just one of the cruelties I was met with thanks to a simple skin condition. They made me hate the way I looked. That nickname devoured my identity. Though as much as I hated my appearance, I hated my bullies more.
I suppose that’s why I gravitated towards “Revenge of the Bullied” horror as a kid. Christine, Carrie, Evilspeak…I saw myself in those misunderstood teens. Unwanted. Unloved. An outcast. These were all kids whose only crime was being themselves, and they were tormented for it. I cheered when the bullies got their comeuppance. That’s why we watch those movies, for that taste of justice. Except, that catharsis was bittersweet. Devastation would creep in while watching the bullied kid become the monster, only for them to wind up dead or institutionalized by the end. Remembered not as the victim of cruelty, but as a harbinger of punishment to be feared by others.
Bullied kids don’t want to be feared. They want to be accepted.
It’s not that the aforementioned films were “wrong”. They had good intentions and they were important to me. But Piggy serves up something better to chew on than that traditional sense of catharsis by making its subject the hero.
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Pereda plays off this history within the subgenre by starting with the way we view Sara. Going into Piggy, we expect that this will be a curly tale of revenge at the hands of a picked-on teenager. Our introduction to Sara is of those very hands as she cuts, pounds, and tears pieces of bloody meat. It lures us into believing that she is not perturbed by gore. Maybe she even likes it. Before knowing a thing about her, the film has already made us judge this sad girl the way others judge her.
Galán’s gut-wrenching performance and Pereda’s intimate approach show us how wrong we are by seeing the world from Sara’s tear-streaked eyes. The pictures of her that others post on Instagram for a laugh. The way Claudia refuses to acknowledge her. Sara is drowning underneath the weight of her desperation to be understood. When Claudia and the others attack her at the pool and Sara cries for help beneath the distorted surface, that’s how it feels to be one of these kids. Unable to breathe. Reaching for someone who isn’t there to pull you out.
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Between the pool scene and the group of boys who chase Sara after she’s forced to walk home in her bathing suit, Piggy convinces us to hate her bullies just as much as she does. We want vengeance. The bloodshed. Misguided as it is, we get why Sara says nothing as the hulking killer drives away with Claudia and the others in his ghost-white van. “Fuck them,” she says, cut with the sound of a meat saw to imply the fate of the girls. None of us would mind if they fell face-first into a grinder.
Except violence does not beget violence. As much as I adore them, that’s often the problem with this sub-genre. Carrie’s rage burns down her entire school. Christine’s Arnie tries to run down the only people who love him. The bullied kid unleashes staggering terror without exception. These films want us to think twice about bullying anyone. Yet they have an adverse effect on the kids they’re trying to help. What does it say to children like my younger self when the people you identify with either die or turn evil or both? The quiet but well-liked Final Girls survive their tormentors, why can’t I? I often wondered if I was destined to end up in the slaughterhouse as well thanks to my bullying.
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Piggy flirts with that idea through Sara’s relationship with the killer. She should fear the guy, but gets off to him instead. You might be attracted to a vicious murderer, too, if they were the only one who ever showed you acceptance. The killer sees himself in Sara, an “ugly duckling” dismissed by an even uglier society. He’s the manifestation of her anger. When she screams at her mother that she wishes she was dead, he hurts mom. And for a brief time, Sara takes comfort in him. It’s so easy to find solace in hate. Hate makes us feel powerful.
The catharsis of watching bullies get it in horror has its salty satisfaction. But as a bullied kid, seeing someone like you overcome those hateful feelings and become the hero? The taste of that is so much sweeter.
Bullying takes over your entire life. It makes you doubt yourself and everyone around you. The slaughterhouse where the finale takes place is a metaphor for Sara’s troubled mind. A mirrored version of the shop she works at with her family, this place is dirty, filled with rot and decay. Sara has probably daydreamed of Claudia and the others chained up and in pain as they are in a place like this. That’s the killer’s gift to her.
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Pereda’s final stroke of brilliance comes once again in our expectations for Sara. Even after reaching deep into her soul, after she tears the throat out of that voice pushing her towards the darkness, we still believe she will give in as she aims a gun at the captured girls. Still, we assume the worst of Sara. Whether through similar movies or our own life, there’s a part of us that believes this is how it will always end for kids like her.
But Sara is not a piece of meat with a predetermined destiny.
Pereda gives the audience something so precious in its rarity: A bullied kid in the “Revenge of the Bullied” genre who does not become the monster, but rises above her tormentors and saves them. Stumbling down that road covered in blood, Sara is reborn. She’s granted a second chance. She gives her bullies the metaphorical finger by showing them she’s stronger than they could ever hope to be. Now that’s revenge. She also offers a vital message to kids like her. Your bullies do not define you. The hate they inspire does not control you. You are not the freak, the outcast, the monster. You’re the hero of your own story. No, you are not perfect. Yes, you will make mistakes. But that’s okay.
For every single bullied kid out there, there’s hope in a character like Sara. I’d much rather feast on the warmth of hope than the dish best served cold that is violent revenge.
More helpings of films like Piggy, please.
