‘Piggy’ Ending, Explained: Does Sara Save Her Friends Or Kill Them?

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“Piggy” is a Spanish horror thriller film that also has drama and social commentary at its core, and it can be argued that this drama takes over by the end. Following a young overweight girl who is always teased and mocked by her friends because of her body, the film comes up with a very real and palpable projection of Sara’s anger and hatred against her friends when a ruthless serial killer arrives in town. “Piggy” takes even bolder steps in its visuals and presents enough bloody mess to add to it the thrills of the slasher horror genre.

Spoilers Ahead


‘Piggy’ Plot Summary: What Is The Film About?

Sara, a young teenager, is extremely conscious of her body weight as she is constantly mocked and bullied because of it by her friends and neighbors in the small town. The situation is not much better inside Sara’s house either, as her mother is always harsh on her and almost always blames her for her actions. Her family runs a traditional meat shop, selling hand-cut pork portions, and this perhaps makes Sara the brunt of more jokes. As part of her usual schedule, she sits inside the meat shop one morning, accompanied by her father and studying, when she sees her friends gathered outside. Three other girls of her age who live in the neighborhood, Maca, Claudia, and Roci, discuss with their friend Pedro about going to the festivities at night. Soon after, Claudia and Maca enter Sara’s shop to pick up some meat that Claudia’s mother had ordered. Although they do not do anything strange, Sara is sure that the girls would definitely do something mean, and sure enough, she finds out after a while that Maca has posted a picture of Sara and her family on social media and called them pigs. Despite Sara’s frustration, she is unable to do anything and is rather used to such derogatory remarks all the time, but she also has anger building up inside her.

That afternoon, she goes to the local swimming pool by herself. The lifeguard or the waitress who would serve drinks by the poolside are nowhere to be seen, but Sara is probably pleased with it, as she is very conscious about stepping out in public wearing a swimsuit. However, soon she sees a man inside the pool, and he is not someone from town. Maca, Roci, and Claudia now join the scene as they walk towards the pool and spot Sara there. The girls, especially Maca and Roci, take this opportunity to shamelessly bully and harass Sara, and they even try to drown the girl as a joke. As Claudia is one who she still considers her friend, Sara calls out to the girl for help, but Claudia does not take her side. The bullies then flee the scene with Sara’s clothes, and the girl is forced to run the long way back home in her swimsuit. After further harassment from a group of wasteful boys from the town, Sara suddenly sees a white van pull up behind her, driven by the man she had earlier seen at the pool. Picking up a towel that the stranger offers her, Sara is shocked to see Claudia captive inside the van, calling out for help. But the young teenager does not know how to react or save her bully, and she instead continues on her run back home.


What Does The Stranger Do To Maca, Roci, And Claudia?

Sara manages to return home, but she does not say anything about what she has seen to anyone. Later that afternoon, she is sent to a hardware store to pick up some new lights for her father, and it is here that her mother comes to meet her. Taking Sara along, the mother drives down to the public pool, where the police have gathered by now, as the lifeguard has been found dead underwater. Although Sara does not want to tell anyone about the incidents from earlier in the day because it would be traumatic to recall the bullying, her mother makes it public that her daughter has been to the pool. When about to be questioned by the police, the young girl lies that she had gone to the river instead and had not seen anything at the pool. The news reports said that the lifeguard had been killed by the waitress’ boyfriend, both of whom were missing, but no suspicion was raised against the stranger, who had definitely committed the murder, and he killed another woman that evening in the town. Back at Sara’s house, Claudia’s mother comes looking for any information on her daughter since she has still not returned home. The woman says that she has been trying to call Sara, but she has not been responding, which reminds Sara that she had left her phone behind somewhere that afternoon. Perhaps realizing that she would get into trouble if her phone was found by the police and also get scolded by her parents if she lost the phone, Sara decides to go look for it. She takes her father’s phone and returns to the path she had taken that afternoon, constantly calling her number to track down her phone.

In the meantime, the parents of the other girls were also concerned that their daughters had not returned home, especially since there was a killer on the loose, and they decided to go looking for them. Making use of a signal tracking application, they trace the girls’ phones and reach the same forested area inside which Sara is looking for her own phone. She does find it but turns around to see the strange man from the afternoon, the killer, come up to her. Despite being a violent murderer, the man had grown some affection towards Sara, and he seemed interested in the teenager. Although the reason why he committed the rest of the murders is never revealed, the man kidnapped the three girls most definitely because he had seen them bully and harass Sara. At present, the man asks the girl to stay quiet, and they hide together inside an abandoned building. To Sara, this moment felt like a rather romantic one, probably because this was the first time in her teenage years that she had shared such close proximity with a man. The parents of the missing girls follow the signal on their daughters’ phones and reach the same construction, but when they look around, they stumble across the dead body of the missing waitress from the poolside. The two local policemen who were looking into the case had been driving around searching for a missing bull that had run away from the place of the festival, and they now heard the shrill cries of the parents. As the body is taken away by the police, Sara returns home and is again called out of her house at night by Pedro. The boy now confronts her about lying and says that Claudia had sent a video of her in the pool that afternoon, and Pedro was aware that she had indeed been to the pool. Sara tells Pedro about the bullying and promises Pedro to tell the police the truth if he is accused of any wrongdoing, but the boy soon sells her out. Claudia’s mother and the parents of the other two girls confront the two teenagers on the street, and Sara’s mother now comes out to protect her daughter. A scuffle breaks out, and the police arrive when Pedro reveals in front of everyone that Sara had admitted to having gone to the pool. The girl is immediately picked up by the police for questioning.

Sara’s mother also accompanies her to the police station and sits through the interrogation since Sara is a minor. Throughout the interrogation, the mother acts extremely defensive toward her daughter. She protects Sara by not letting the policemen ask too many questions, and when they are finally allowed to leave, she reveals why she has been doing so. Sara’s mother had found the towel, which she had wrapped around herself when returning from the pool. It was the same towel that the murderer had given her, and this towel belonged to Claudia and even had her initials on it. Sara’s mother understands that her daughter does know something which she is hiding, and therefore she does not want her to get into any trouble. While they return home, the murderer breaks into Sara’s house and attacks her father when the latter finds him inside. The father tries to fight back but is ultimately killed by the man. By now, Sara has returned home, and she has an outburst against her mother as she feels that her parents do not understand her, and she shrieks out that she just wants them to die. At the very same time, the murderer enters the scene and kills the mother. He is about to do the same to Sara’s younger brother too, but the girl asks him not to, and he then takes her away in his van. The two drive into the night, and the murderer tends to the girl’s small injuries when the van crashes into the bull, which had been missing from the festival. Sara faints from the accident, and the murderer protectively carries her to a big, abandoned slaughterhouse outside the town where he had made his shelter. The next morning, she wakes up inside the dimly lit place and goes around to shockingly find her two friends, Claudia and Roci, kept hostage there. The hands and feet of the girls have been chained with their mouths gagged, and they have been hanged just like pig carcasses are done after slaughter. They desperately ask for Sara’s help, and she tries her best to untie them. However, at this very moment, the murderer returns, and Sara has to quickly decide which side she wants to take.


‘Piggy’ Ending Explained: Does Sara Save Her Friends Or Kill Them?

While Claudia and Roci still remain hanging from the chains, Sara hides from the murderer and has to traverse through the entire slaughterhouse, almost like an animal trying to escape slaughter. While doing so, Sara also stumbles across the dead body of her third friend, Maca, who used to be cruelest to her, as the girl had been murdered and chopped into pieces. In the end, she is caught by the murderer, and as she cries out that she does not want to die, the man assures her that he will not do any harm to her at all. He then takes her in front of the two captive girls and riles her up against her two bullies. The man now hands Sara his knife and tells her that they will kill the bullies together. Sara does consider this for a few seconds as her face uncontrollably expresses all the hatred and rage that she has against the two for their incessant abuse towards her, but she ultimately decides not to give in to this all-consuming hate. Sara turns around and tries to stab the murderer, but he seems prepared for it. A fight ensues, and the two captive girls also manage to help as Sara finally kills the murderer and breathes a sigh of relief. Claudia and Roci ask for help again, and Roci once again refers to Sara as “piggy” even now. It is almost as if Roci does not even realize how wrong she is, and the film wants to encapsulate the almost normalized abuse in society through this. The murderer had also been carrying a rifle, which he had stolen from Sara’s father, and now Sara fires this gun toward her two friends. While a doubtful second passes with regard to whether she has killed her friends, it seems like the young girl has chosen to forgive and move on. She actually shoots off the chains holding Claudia and Roci and, therefore, saves them at the end. Sara walks out of the slaughterhouse and towards the main road as if dazed by everything that just happened, and on the main road, she stops Pedro, who had been traveling by on his motorcycle. She asks for his help and tells him to take her to the town, and the two then ride away.


See More: ‘Piggy’ Review [Sundance 2022]: A Harrowing Genre Exploration With A Stellar Centre Performance


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Sourya Sur Roy
Sourya Sur Roy
Sourya keeps an avid interest in all sorts of films, history, sports, videogames and everything related to New Media. Holding a Master of Arts degree in Film Studies, he is currently working as a teacher of Film Studies at a private school and also remotely as a Research Assistant and Translator on a postdoctoral project at UdK Berlin.

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