The Horror Show
Grabbers
by Jon Wright
Monster movies are a subgenre of horror that I have mixed feelings towards, at best. I like ones that lean closer to horror than they do action. That’s not saying anything is wrong with action, it’s just not my thing. The most recent remake of Godzilla didn’t appeal to me because it was too action-y and focused on petty humans I didn’t care about. I loved John Carpenter’s The Thing because it had drama, suspense, and scares. So, I took a chance this week watching Grabbers, a horror comedy with monsters.
Garda (an Irish police officer), Lisa Nolan is filling in for the sheriff while he is away for two weeks. Her partner is Ciaran O’Shea, an alcoholic. They’re called in to investigate when deceased whales start littering the shores. The local marine ecologist, Dr. Smith, determines that the whales had died prior to their beaching. Meanwhile, town drunk, Paddy, captures an unknown creature that attacks him. He manages to fend off the creature and render it comatose. Paddy takes it to the officers and doctor where they examine it, determining it only needs blood and water to survive. Paddy dubs the creature as a, “Grabber.” The Grabber he captured was a pregnant female meaning there is likely a male to breed with hiding nearby. To make matters worse, a huge storm is coming and as long as it’s raining, the Grabbers will be able to come on to land. The townsfolk have one thing going for them; alcohol is totally toxic to Grabbers. Hopefully a night full of drinking will be able to save everyone.
This movie was hilarious. The humor was plot relevant and didn’t rely on random silliness or jokes unrelated to the plot for laughs. My personal favorite was a joke about the pointlessness of human lives in a horror movie. You know how in lots of horror movies characters never react appropriately to deaths? Like someone will be killed off and instead of grieving him or her for the rest of the movie, all characters will abruptly forget him or her with little to no psychological trauma. Very few characters actually died this movie, one of which was pretty relevant to the plot; I’m not saying whom. Then, at the end of the movie the survivors start joking about how they have to take care of the deceased character’s dog. Then, one survivor mentions how they always wanted a dog. It’s normally inappropriate to joke about someone’s death but jokes are essentially what human lives amount to in horror movies. There is also a brilliant moment when the police try to persuade a church full of people to attend a party at the bar instead. I personally find horror and comedy are very complimentary of each other, like chocolate and peanut butter, unless your allergic to peanuts or comedy. I loved Shaun of the Dead and Army of Darkness the humor in Grabbers is subtler, which is good. I like subtlety; it makes your brain do the work for the laughs and forces you to analyze the situation. Instead of being force-fed dumb jokes.
I also love the design of the Grabbers. I find that creating a completely original monster that doesn’t look like anything preexisting is difficult. Some examples, Godzilla was based on the fictional dinosaur from The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and Clover shares many similarities with the creature from The Host. If I had to describe the Grabbers it’s basically a mouth surrounded by tentacles and the mouth houses a frog like tongue. The closest thing I can compare it to is an alien my friend designed in the game Spore. I highly doubt the studio acquired the local game files on my friend’s computer for this movie. So, as far as I can say, this design is completely original.
The idea that alcohol is lethal to alien life forms isn’t an original idea. The 2007 zombie horror film Days of Darkness followed a similar idea. A comet travelling into Earth’s atmosphere lets an alien parasite into the air infecting all who are not under the influence of alcohol. That movie was terrible. When I first read the description of Grabbers I thought it was going to be a very similar premise. That’s what initially turned me off. Besides the fact that the alien life forms from both movies are sensitive to alcohol, both are introduced to earth due to a comet. Days of Darkness took itself much too seriously and that was its critical failure. Grabbers is light-hearted and I think that’s what separated the two films entirely. Since it’s a comedy about monster movies, I think it lends itself more to a parody of contemporary horror films and culture. As an Irish film, you would think that it would want to alienate itself from the stereotype that the Irish drink a lot. It doesn’t, I couldn’t think of a metaphor better than this movie; the Irish townsfolk literally have to drink to survive.
I actually really liked this movie. I went into this wanting to hate it because I couldn’t disassociate it from a certain zombie movie with a similar premise. I’m glad that I was wrong. I wish I could comment on how I thought the acting was great or terrible but I couldn’t. I have a bad time telling if actors with accents are good or not. So, I’m just going to say the acting was wonderful. I was greeted by a friendly face watching this film, Russell Tovey, better known as the werewolf from Being Human. He’s been in other things I’ve watched and I don’t know why, but this guy is just really likeable. So, that was an instant plus for this horror flick. I felt like the characters were thoroughly flushed out. O’Shea is an alcoholic and Nolan is a workaholic, giving characters flaws is a great way to humanize them and gets the audience to immediately sympathize. A problem that movies tend to face is letting their flaws become the character’s sole defining trait. It often creates one-dimensional characters and then they cease to feel real. I like that O’Shea and Nolan are aware of their flaws and grow, eventually overcoming their weaknesses. Grabbers was directed by Jon Wright, some guy I’ve never heard of. His debut feature film was called Tormented that sounds kind of boring to me. However, he has another movie coming out that sounds extremely interesting, Robot Overlords. That’s all I need, definitely going to watch this one. In the meantime give Grabbers a watch. I’ll be waiting for Robot Overlords to enslave humanity.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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