Rating: C+
Dir: Aik Karapetian
Star: Kevin Janssens, Laura Silina, Aigars Vilims, Normunds Griestins
a.k.a. Samuel’s Travels
“I would not, in any way, consider that to be a horror movie,” stated Chris firmly, as the end credits rolled. Tubi disagreed, filing it in both the horror and comedy categories. The IMDb, on the other hand, opts for drama and comedy, so appears in agreement with Chris. Me? I was hard-pushed to find any humour in this, so am more inclined to take umbrage at the “comedy” label. But it’s not exactly traditional horror, so I can see her point. On the other hand, it has probably crossed the Latvian countryside off the list of potential holiday destinations. This would qualify it in the “rural nightmare” subgenre of horror, with its story of a man who is utterly unprepared for the local inhabitants and their savagery.
The victim here is Samuel, a foreigner who has travelled to Latvia in search of his birth father. While driving along a road, he ploughs into a piglet, injuring it. Unsure of what to do, he ends up digging a grave for it in the woods. Awkwardly, he is just burying the animal when its owner, Kirke (Silina), shows up. She’s surprisingly unfazed by this, and invites him back to her farmhouse for dinner and a bed for the night. [The pig, incidentally, makes a miraculous recovery] But the next day, Kirke, along with her father (Vilims) and her grumpy local suitor Jancuks (Griestins), chain Sam up in their pigsty, basically as a replacement piece of livestock.
From here… well, it doesn’t quite go in any expected direction. In what is one doozy of a case of Stockholm Syndrome, Sam ends up falling for Kirke, and also wins the affection of her dad. I will admit, our understanding of this may have been slightly affected by not realizing there were subtitles up until the half-way point. I initially thought the untranslated conversations in Latvian were deliberate, to put the audience in Sam’s uncomprehending shoes, with the narration standing in. What’s impressive is, the subs didn’t really help, on any more than a surface level of comprehension. I mean, the piglet ends up helping Samuel to regain his freedom, and is perhaps the most sympathetic character in the film. Subtitle goes: “Oink”.
It does teeter on the edge of torture porn for pigs, with the harsh reality of farm life not soft-pedalled, and a genuinely disturbing (hopefully CGI) scene of a running pig on fire (top). I take my bacon extra crispy, please. So maybe that’s the horror? But it’s more like a bizarre fairy-tale, one whose moral is almost entirely opaque. I can’t say I was bored, though I might not go so far as to say I was entertained. Bemused might be the best word, and the execution, in both picture and music, is good enough to make for an adequately worthwhile experience. It was, undeniably, different. No, make that Different. With a capital D. Horror? Well… The jury remains out there.