What A Catch: A Horror Film That Makes Pescatarians Squirm

The fishing industry has always relied on one thing to survive: distance. Fishes live out of sight, out of mind. They don’t scream in a way we recognise. They don’t look like us. They aren’t people — or so we tell ourselves.

But Tom Pickering isn’t having it.

The writer and director of I Could Never Go Vegan has returned with a new short horror film, What A Catch, and it’s not for the faint-hearted — especially if you’re still clinging to the idea that stabbing a fish is somehow more acceptable than stabbing a pig.

This Victorian-era nightmare follows a fisherman whose solo trip takes a sinister turn — and unlike most horror, this one isn’t metaphor. It’s exactly what happens to fishes every day, dressed in period costume and a fog of denial.

Pickering has toured the film across the globe — Frightfest, Chicago Horror Film Festival, HorrorHound and more — racking up awards and praise, but more importantly, reaching non-vegan audiences. “It’s been amazing to have people reach out and say how it’s changed their perspective,” he told Plant Based News. “It’s effectively an activism film they weren’t expecting to watch.”

And that’s the catch.

The film exposes the blood-soaked absurdity of fishing by simply mirroring it. No exaggeration, no metaphorical monster — just the actual horror of what happens to billions of fishes, scaled up and made visible.

Pescatarianism: The Horror Hiding in Plain Sight

Pescatarians like to think they’ve opted for the “kinder” form of animal use. No cows, no chickens — just fishes. As if that makes it better. As if being more particular about your victims is a moral high ground.

But fishes aren’t lesser beings. They are just less familiar. That’s it.

In a UK study, researchers explored how pescatarians justify eating fishes while avoiding other animals. The answer? Distance. Social, emotional, physical. One participant even described themselves as a “vegetarian who occasionally eats fish.” 

Here’s how the rationalisations stack up:

The fishy identity – Aligning with vegetarians to feel ethical, while still eating animals.

The compromise excuse – “I do it for convenience,” or “My friends still eat meat.” That’s not ethics, that’s peer pressure.

Face blindness – “Fishes don’t look like us.” They don’t need to. They have their own lives, their own preferences, their own fears.

The Reality Beneath the Water

The fishing industry is not the lesser evil — it’s the biggest one. Up to 2.2 trillion wild fishes are caught every year. Trillion. That’s more than all land animals killed for food combined. Half of them aren’t even eaten by humans — they’re ground up to feed other farmed animals in an absurd feedback loop of destruction.

Fishes aren’t simple creatures either. The bluestreak cleaner wrasse recognises itself in a mirror. Saddled sea bream can distinguish individual humans by their clothes. Some fishes cooperate with octopuses to hunt — cross-species teamwork. And others, when shown a reflection, assess their own body size before picking a fight.

These aren’t instincts. They’re choices. They’re cognition. They’re proof.

And yet, people still gut them alive and call it a compromise.

Horror Is Just the Truth in Costume

What A Catch works because it doesn’t sugar-coat. It doesn’t pretend that exploitation needs to be stylised to be scary. The act of catching, stabbing, suffocating, and gutting someone who doesn’t want to die — that’s horror. That’s fishing.

This film puts the violence front and centre. Not with the usual industry footage people scroll past, but through a story that pulls you in — and then yanks you under.

If we saw land animals treated this way, we’d call it a massacre. But when it’s fishes? We call it dinner.

Bring Fishes Into Focus

If the film does one thing, it’s this: it collapses the distance.

It forces people to see what they usually ignore. It reminds us that fishes aren’t ingredients. They’re not abstractions. They’re not property. They’re just individuals — ones we’ve made invisible.

And it begs the question: if horror films can help people wake up to injustice, why are we still pretending there’s anything ethical about eating animals?

What A Catch is now streaming on YouTube. Just don’t watch it before dinner.