I don’t know what I finished watching after seeing “E-Pigs,” but I know that the director makes a great effort in creating as much whimsy as humanly possible in fifteen minutes and it fails spectacularly. I sat in front of my computer throughout the entirety of this fantasy thriller wondering what the whole point of it was and what it meant, and decided in the end that it was just being quirky for the sake of being quirky. It’s a bizarre and surreal little fantasy thriller that is just a fifteen minute filler of pointless ridiculous imagery for no purpose or statement.
A couple of pig farmers who adore pigs to the point of sexually caressing them decide to one day bond pigs and technology. Why? I guess there’s symbolism in that, but I was too annoyed to figure it out. Surprisingly, the pigs and technology do bond forming a new breed of half machine half pigs who can burst in and out of televisions, radios, and computer screens and begin to go wild terrorizing anyone with an electronic device. This sends us on a groan inducing journey of their owners to fish them out of the electronics and in to the real world and then out of the real world and in to the electronics.
All the while Petar Pasic is able to squeeze in surreal imagery involving pigs in different television shows, piglets accessing robotic limbs, and a goofy sub-plot involving the pig farmer’s wife and a pig wrangler, all of which had me counting the seconds. Ultimately Pasic drops all pretense and completely hurls outlandish visuals at the audience in the finale where a botched lynch mobbing ends in mismatched body parts, a pig head, and three little piggies. I was more than happy to finish this, and Pasic surely won’t be garnering my attention toward any of his shorts again any time soon. Hurling unusual and weird imagery doesn’t make your short an automatic art film, and “E-Pigs” proves it. At fifteen minutes, it’s an excruciating mess with a lack of focus, a lack of purpose, and zero narrative of meaning behind it.