Grabbers

Grabbers (2012)

Runtime: 94 minutes

Directed by:  Jon Wright

Starring: Richard Coyle, Ruth Bradley, Russell Tovey, Lalor Roddy, David Pearse

From: Many different Irish companies

Here's me talking about a movie which in like an hour will be gone from Netflix Instant. That's how I saw this and that's why I watched it last night. It's not great but it's still a fine, fine watch. I explain why in my Letterboxd review below:

This is another one of those films where I watch it at a particular time because Netflix Instant will soon get rid of it; in this case, today is the last day that people can watch this film there... and maybe all other streaming services. It's a horror/comedy I've known of for awhile now but I put off watching it until almost literally the last minute. It was appropriate that I had a drink or two of alcohol before I started watching. It's not really a spoiler as every bit of advertising and plot description you will find for the movie states that the key plot point in this giant monster feature is said monster not eating anyone who is intoxicated, so everyone has to get hammered wasted to avoid dying.

I don't really know a lot about the Irish film industry but at least I can say that I know this film; it was made by many different companies from that country and is set in a rural area; the two leads are a male alcoholic cop and an attractive lady cop who is temporarily working there. That giant critter is discovered and after it kills some people, they find out that it doesn't like the taste of anyone who is real drunk; Irish is part of my heritage so I can say this: people from that country are quite good at drinking massive quantities of alcohol and that is what you see in the film.

An obvious comparison is Tremors; many have done so. I say that this is not as great by that as any means, although it's tough to raise to those high standards. There are various story things which could be carped about. Yet I was still entertained by this, which is definitely more comedy than horror. It has a gruesome moment or two but it's not gory at all. Really, the strongest thing is the language used; I am not from the UK so words like “FECK” I rarely if ever hear spoken by anyone in the United States.

The movie is not a must-see and yet it is still an amusing watch, with fun and charming characters, performances that are at least fine, and the special effects don't look overtly fake. I already stated that my Irish film watching is rather limited-to say the least-so I was fine watching these characters, which I hear are rather stereotypical. As long as you don't expect too much from this movie, you probably will enjoy it.