South Korean independent animation film “Pig That Survived Foot-and-Mouth Disease” is not a pleasant work to watch at all. Mainly driven by the sheer madness and despair of the two different entities at the center of the story, the film often disturbs us with its uncompromisingly grim and pessimistic worldview, but it also strikes and impresses us hard with numerous moments packed with a considerable amount of mood, detail, and intensity.
Right from the very beginning, the film unnerves us a lot for a good reason. We get a rather graphic depiction of a lot of pigs being buried alive due to a local pandemic of foot-and-mouth disease, and then the story eventually focuses on a certain pig which manages to survive as somehow being able to dig up itself from the ground below.
Not long after its lucky escape, the pig finds a little cave where it can hide for a while, and then something really strange happens to it. Not long after desperately wishing to become a human, its body is somehow changed into a humanoid form, probably because of a newly developed chemical substance used for killing the pigs during their burial. While quite excited by its unbelievable transformation, the pig soon becomes despaired to discern that it is still not completely transformed into a human, and that makes it all the more desperate for the whole transformation.
Anyway, this human pig later comes across a group of wild boars inhabiting in a nearby remote forest area, which is incidentally strewn with the dead bodies of many various people who came and then hung themselves for each own desperate reason. After showing who he is and what he is capable of, the pig human persuades the boars to allow him into their group, and it does not take much time for them to come to learn how they can be transformed into humanoid form just like him. They are rather reluctant at first, but becoming a human looks like a pretty good option for survival once he shows them some advantages from the transformation.
Meanwhile, the story also pays attention to a young soldier who finally decides that enough is enough after being harassed and abused by his senior soldiers for a long time. He runs away into that forest area not long after killing one of his senior soldiers, and then he comes to hide in the same cave where the human pig hid before his transformation. Not long after desperately wishing to become something else other than a human being just because of his whole miserable life, the soldier happens to be exposed to that chemical substance in question, and he subsequently finds himself transformed into a sort of Sasquatch.
Although surely feeling quite liberated, the soldier soon becomes rather miserable as still feeling as lonely and isolated as before, and then there comes an unexpected company. When a young woman enters the forest area and then tries to hang herself, the soldier instantly rescues her without hesitation, and the young woman comes to appreciate his little help. As they spend more time together during next several days, they come to depend more on each other, and it looks like there is still some hope for both of them even though they remain totally isolated from the outside world.
When the two main narratives of the story eventually converge during its last act, the film pushes its main characters into more despair and madness, and the following moments are not only darkly intense but also horribly harrowing to say the least. While the pig human becomes increasingly monstrous in his desperate attempt to become a full human being, the soldier comes to have a gloomy moment of revelation involved with his relationship with the young woman, and we are not so surprised when things later get all the grimmer with the arrival of armed soldiers and a sudden big wildfire.
Although its overall animation quality is rather rough at times, the film distinguishes itself with not only considerable technical competence but also its wildly vivid style and imagination. While its animation figures look a little too broad on the surface, they are imbued with enough amount of distinctive personality at least, and I was a bit surprised to learn later that 1) they are all based on the various motion capture actings of only one performer and 2) only a handful of voice performers took multiple roles during its production. In addition, the film is steadily filled with a lot of mood and details to be appreciated, and we get instantly immersed into the world inhabited by its main characters, even while being occasionally jolted by its unnerving intensity. As a matter of fact, the film does not flinch itself at all from lots of violence and bloody as well as occasional nudity in the story, and this is certainly not for any young sensitive audience out there.
While it comes to spin its wheels around the expected climactic part, the film still holds itself fairly well even at this point thanks to the skillful direction of director/writer/editor/producer Hur Bun-wook, who made several short animation films before making a feature film debut here. Sadly, he died because of an unfortunate accident right before it was supposed to be released in South Korean theaters several months ago, and we can only imagine how much he would advance and achieve if it were not for that unfortunate accident.
Nevertheless, Hur’s last work is something to be remembered by me and many other audiences out there, and this is surely one of the better works from South Korean animation industry during last several years. Therefore, I recommend you to check it out, especially if you have been interested in the recent gradual growth of South Korean animation industry like me.
