GRABBERS (2012)
a review by Evan Landon
When I jumped on the #MonsterFam discord channel, I was not expecting a wonderful, mystical, Irish story that came from the bowels of whatever the brain behind this was thinking. Now, I have talked at nauseum about movies I really think should have less money pumped into it, but I think this one might have won the pony here.
Question: how much is “too much” when spending it on a film?
Grabbers is an interesting one for a number of reasons. Aside from the full-on “Irish” tropes of sinking further and further into debt, alcoholism, and a dire, unsympathetic community, what else is there to really wonder about? Welp, once the giant Chthulhu-esque monsters show up, things get a bit different. With the help of a local ecologist, two Gardaí Síochána (Irish police and security service) discover that the eponymous “Grabbers” will not ingest people that have a high blood alcohol ratio, so that fundamental trope of inhabiters of the isle is on full display in this science fiction creature feature.
It is difficult to speculate how well this popcorn flick would have done with a more well-known director and cast, but that would have ballooned the $5.3 million higher than expected. The actors they did get did quite well, however:
Richard Coyle portrays “Ciarán O'Shea”, an alcoholic garda who has been on the island for an undisclosed amount of time, much more than his new partner, “Lisa Nolan”, who is played by a brilliant Ruth Bradley, and has had some great success after this one. Her character is new to the island and has never drank alcohol before, so as the plot dictates, she gets super-sloshed and steals the show in a lot of ways. Actually, everyone does a fantastic job, especially director Jon Wright who displays a lot of intuitive camera movements that edit very well with the special effects by Matt Platts-Mills.
What sets Grabbers apart from any of it's contemporaries is this movie's composition with such a simple premise with mostly inane dialogue from characters that you barely know, yet somehow care about, if not for the simple character tropes a movie like this being inherent. It's almost seamless in the places a horror comedy should be; just take a look at Piranha 3D. Point taken, point made.
This is an obvious graduation from any SyFy channel schlock that could be found anywhere. I mean, there are a lot of fucking great ones: Sharktopus, Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda, Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf, Sharknado, Sharknado 4: The Fourth Awakens, Dinocroc, Dinocroc vs. Supergator, Lavalantula, Lavalantua 2: 2 Lava 2 Lantuala!, The Last Sharknado, Piranhaconda, Arachnoquake...
Sorry, I trailed off there. I actually just wanted to see how many of those I could get. Anyways, this one is a lot better than any of those. The Lavalantua ones are actually kind of fun. Maybe I will do one of those next.
Despite premiering at many festivals and garnering a lot of great reviews, Grabbers failed to clean up at the box office in even a minuscule way, making $440k against that $5.3 million budget. It deserves a lot better, in my opinion.
3 out of 5