Grabbers



The authorities of a remote and sparsely populated Irish island have become quite puzzled lately. A pod of mutilated whale corpses has suddenly washed up on shore, several people have gone missing, and at least one person has been found dead. For a small, boring island where nothing ever happens that’s a lot of shit to drop on them in a 24-hour period. But it’s about to get worse when a local fisherman shows them some bizarre creature he caught in his lobster trap. Nobody knows what it is, but they do know three things: 1) it needs water to survive, 2) it sustains itself by drinking the blood of its prey and sucking them dry, and 3) they also found eggs, so that means there’s more than one of the slimy little buggers. For a remote, sparsely populated island with a huge storm coming their way and no immediate way to get any kind of outside assistance, that is some crap-tastically terrible news. Luckily for the people in charge though, they’ve also learned one more thing: Turns out the creatures are all deathly allergic to booze. Which means it’s time to round everyone up and head on down to the local pub and get hammered if any of them have any hope of surviving the night. You know, assuming the people in charge can convince everyone in town to get piss-assed drunk without having to tell them a giant, slithering, blood-sucking monster and its progeny are after them.


Considering this is Ireland, unsurprisingly it wasn’t that hard.

So I decided I didn’t feel like watching subtitles this week, but I also wanted to still stick with my yearly self-imposed foreign film month…. What to do, what to do…. What’s this? An Irish/English horror/comedy co-production, you say? Perfect. Grabbers it is. I also think filmmiasma watched this one too a while back, and they seemed to like it, so I figured this wasn’t a sucky bet. And lo, I ended up being right. Because though the film has some flaws, it’s still a fun little romp that doesn’t try to shove its brand of stupid comedy down the viewer’s throat, which is exactly the type of thing I like from my horror comedies.


See, he could only find a rolled up newspaper to defend himself. It’s funny!

It helps immensely that this is a very well-crafted film to begin with. It had a very respectable budget of just a little over 5 million, but though that number sounds big, that’s still a fairly meager sum when it comes to film-making these days. Luckily though, everyone seems to have focused all that money on the things that matter. Meaning the acting is good, the lighting is impeccable enough that I can blissfully see everything that’s happening in the dark (which is important as the film’s extended climax happens exclusively at night) and, most importantly, though the creatures are primarily made using CGI, it’s clear they sprung for the good CGI, because that slithery ball of tentacles looks pretty damn good. Granted, you primarily only see the creatures cast in shadow, which I’m sure was at least partially done to hide any glaring flaws, but regardless of that it still looks pretty good. And to top it off, the film also has some absolutely lovely cinematography, almost to the point where you could say that the movie’s two main focuses were watching Irish drunkards try not to die, and basking in stellar beach landscapes. And honestly, if that were all this film was I’d be plenty fine with that.





Really, the more I think about it the more I feel like I only have two real qualms with the film, with the first being the inconsistent implementation of the humor. Because unlike a lot of horror comedies lately that seem to only aim only for the lowest of lowbrow humor and then bombard you with it, I really liked the more subtle, situational humor found here. A lot of it was still silly and ridiculous, sure. But it worked for me. So I’m kinda disappointed that it really only showed up sporadically until the film got to the end. Then it kicks in much more consistently. But that still makes the first half of the film feel more sparse by comparison. So if they’d just figured out a way to equalize the humor more the movie would have felt more balanced and been better for it.



And the only other minor issue I have is that…the film isn’t really very scary. Which normally I wouldn’t even consider mentioning in regards to a horror/comedy, because usually the “horror” in question is typically just an excuse for most of these movies to tell and/or visualize some type of joke. Except Grabbers actually does attempt to pull the “horror” card in the first scene, and it…really just isn’t scary at all. It just feels like any standard horror opening where a couple faceless twats die. And maybe that was the point, and maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know. But then the movie has another go at it a few scenes later, while also including some monster humor into those moments, and that attack scene goes much better. So I don’t know what was going on there. But the point is: it felt like they made the attempt, but it didn’t work, so I’m making note of it. Not that I’m sure it really matters. Because I categorize this film as a silly monster movie more than anything, and those have never been known to aim for true horror anyway. They’re just trying to have fun.



So, I’m usually hesitant about horror comedies, but I’m happy to say I liked Grabbers. It’s not perfect. It’s got some pacing and tone inconsistencies, I think the climax could have had more “POP!”, and I’m still not sure about that awkward romance angle they crammed in there, but overall it’s a silly, funny film that tries to subvert some of your horror expectations. It sounds good, looks great, is amusing, and has a lot of fun characters. So if you’re looking for a silly horror movie to waste 94 minutes with, you could do a lot worse than Grabbers.

Grabbers is available on a variety of streaming services.

Grabbers is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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