THE PIGMAN MURDERS is the "found footage" account of the not-particularly-original-or-imaginative fates that befell seven friends - Paulie (Mark Hutchinson), Adam (Tom Ward), Lee (Andrew Neenan), Sammy (Gerard Fallon), Joshua (Camille Yourell), Fran (Eugene Horan), and Peter (Ollie Keogh) - who disappeared in the Connemara County, Gallway wilderness along with hired cameraman Stefan (cinematographer Marius Puodziunas) documenting their trip as a tribute to a childhood friend lost the year before to cancer. Six months after their disappearance, snuff-like video footage was uploaded to social networking sites by persons unknown and the victims therein were identified as the missing men. The group prove fractious even before they are dodging farmer's bullets and hearing squealing and grunting in the night, but the loyalty they feel for one another as they disappear one by one may just be what gets them all killed.

The wide open spaces of Connemara make an interesting setting for a "found footage" film, taking on an agoraphobic atmosphere as their pursuer or pursuers no longer depend on the shadows of the night and the claustrophobic woodlands. That said, there isn't much to recommend THE PIGMAN MURDERS as it's everything we've seen before, but with an Irish accent. The actors and filmmakers have all done more than a few shorts with one another, but their chemistry and rapport doesn't translate effectively onto the screen to make the characters and their conflicts more interesting than the bickering characters of any other "found footage" film (we're neither saddened or pleased when the characters meet their grisly fates). The "Pigman" is not particularly interesting despite the distrubing mask, but we'll presumably learn more about him in the in-production THE PIGMAN MURDERS II: THE LOST FOOTAGE.