Hunky man’s man and Iraq war veteran Aaron Wade leads a troupe of guys on a hunting weekend in the hills of Hicksville, USA, where they stay at his late uncle’s rural retreat. Turns out that Unc may well have fallen victim to an infamous, 3000 lb local monster pig variously nicknamed “Pigfoot” and “Hogzilla”.

   “Fuck huntin’ … let’s get high!”. Set to a dispiritingly terrible score, this apparent monster movie turns out to have ideas above its station and one of the most cluttered horror scripts in recent memory. Unsubtle satirical overtones repeatedly reference The War, even to the point where our hero gets his moody Asian girlfriend aroused by graphically talking of what it was like to fight out there. There’s nothing wrong with a genre movie having a political subtext, but director Isaac - best known for JASON X - hasn’t the right touch to pull it off without it being signposted and rammed down the audience’s throat.

   PIG HUNT has significant potential, with its gruesome interludes and wacky sub-plots including a lesbian hippy pig-worshipping cult, but none of it gels and even the gore can’t prevent it from coming off as surprisingly dull. Which is saying something when your movie includes gorily broken knees, decapitation, shotgun blasts, porcine disembowelment and even the kind of eyeball poking that would never have made it into a R-rated movie two decades ago.

   The movie is messily structured, slow to get going and has no one for us to root for. The most engaging aspect is the monster pig - but even this is rendered redundant for most of the duration. Kudos to whoever made the sensible decision of having old school practical FX bring the creature to life, but this barely seen, lumbering big-pig is dramatically under-used and no match for RAZORBACK. It’s about as genuinely threatening as that snuffly creature from SESAME STREET.