Review: Grabbers (2012)

Grabbers (2012)

Not rated

Score: 4 out of 5

To borrow the accented swear word used by so many characters in this film, Grabbers is a feckin' good movie. It's a simple horror-comedy monster movie that takes a while to get going, but once it does, it's simply a joyous blast to watch. It's got a fun, lovable cast, some great monster effects that it builds up to before going for broke with, and a plot that may just be the most stereotypically Irish thing ever -- which it actually does some interesting things with rather than just running on novelty and a one-joke premise. As far as monster movies go, this one was a hidden gem of the highest order. Hardly a revolution in the genre, but still a very enjoyable one.

The central joke here can be summed up by reading the plot description. A bunch of tentacled, blood-drinking, squid-like aliens land on Earth just off the coast of Ireland, and make their way to remote Erin Island, home of a small fishing village. The aliens are aquatic and dry out quickly on land; unfortunately for the humans on Erin Island, there's a storm coming, but fortunately for them, alcohol is fatally toxic to the aliens due to its dessicant properties. And since they drink blood, this means that the best way to make yourself immune to their predation is to head to the nearest pub, get completely feckin' hammered, and raise your BAC to an unacceptable level. This movie may be built around one joke, but it's a joke that it finds a lot of interesting directions to take. One of the protagonists, a small-town cop named Ciaran O'Shea, is an alcoholic who constantly shows up to work hung over, but since he's the most experienced guy on the force, he's the one who has to stay sober in order to coordinate the town's defense. Meanwhile, Lisa Nolan, the young, fresh-faced, by-the-book cop straight from Dublin, has her first drink in order to deter the aliens, and immediately turns into a basic bitch under the influence. Furthermore, the fact that the everyone is drunk off their asses complicates the proceedings when they have to actually, you know, fight the monsters, leaving them bumbling messes who come up with all manner of terrible ideas and implement them about as well as you'd expect. Filling their bodies with liquor may prevent the monsters from drinking their blood, but it does nothing about the fact that there are monsters all around them trying to kill them -- and watching them try to deal with that problem is where the real fun comes in. It reminded me a lot of Edgar Wright's The World's End, another film about an alien menace accosting people who would be more at home in a bar brawl.

Something else this movie shares with The World's End, even if it's not quite as bombastic, is its top-notch production values. The aliens here are done with a mix of practical effects for the smaller ones and CGI for the big one and the swarm of babies, and they look like they came out of a movie that cost at least ten times as much (Wikipedia lists the budget as $5.3 million). For the first half of the movie, I was worried by just how much they were keeping the monsters off-screen, making it seem like a film that didn't have the resources to bring their biggest ideas to life. Once it got into the second half, however, I clammed right up with my complaints as the film proved eager to show off its slimy tentacle monsters in all their glory. The special effects alone are a reason to watch this, as the monsters jump onto people's faces, roll and flop their way across the landscape, and look like things that may well cause me to grab a nice shot of hard liquor myself. While the film is more interested in laughs than frights, these guys were still a credible menace, and had a weight to them that made them feel real, almost. The cast, composed primarily of Irish/British TV actors, was also a cut above what is normal for B-movies. I bought Richard Coyle as O'Shea, a guy who is good as his job whenever he isn't drunk or hungover, as well as Ruth Bradley as Nolan, the "good girl" who turns into a lush after one beer; both of them got plenty of big laughs out of me and sold the action scenes where they fight the monsters. The entire supporting cast was a slew of memorable one-off characters, too, from an Irish priest who I'm convinced was based on Father Ted (ask your British friend) to the one cocky asshole who drunkenly goes out to face the monster with his homemade super-soaker flamethrower. They felt less like characters in a monster movie and more like characters out of an indie comedy about a city girl who moves to a picturesque Irish fishing village (i.e. Nolan's character arc), suddenly dropped into a monster movie and given free rein to get as blue as they want with the dialogue. You wanna hear old grandmas cursing up a storm, or a jolly fisherman beating the snot out of a tentacle creature? You've got it.

The Bottom Line

A hell of a little monster movie, one where it's practically mandatory that you and everyone around you bring plenty of beer for the full experience but is still fun even if you're the designated driver. Now I've got another great movie to watch back-to-back with The Boondock Saints every St. Patrick's Day!