Unnatural



AKA: Man-eater

A photographer, his assistant, and two models head up to an isolated cabin in the remote Alaskan wilderness to do a fashion photo shoot for the weekend. The cabin they’re staying at is some kind of hunting lodge, but since it’s the off season no one else is there except the staff. And since it’s so rural, there’s no internet and they can’t be contacted by phone, meaning no one from the outside world can bother them. So, in theory, this is supposed to be a relaxing, easy gig. Go up. Take pictures. Enjoy some rustic living and local, home cooked meals. Go home. Easy peasy pumpkin squeasy. But unfortunately for them and everyone else at the cabin, it turns out there’s some sort of secret research facility several miles away and one of their test subjects just escaped, and all because the one researcher who didn’t get munched on forgot to close the damn garage door after she escaped.


Are you fucking kidding me, lady?

Unnatural is an American action/horror movie from 2015, and is merely one of the many, many monster movies from the 2010’s that keeps popping up on the various suggestion feeds of the free streaming services I use, and that I have never otherwise heard about. And judging by that and the rather pitiful looking posters I’ve seen, I kinda just assumed it meant that this film was yet another bit of lame Made-for-TV nonsense and didn’t think too much more about it. But in this case it wasn’t a Made-for-TV film, and it turns out that Unnatural did at least get a (I’m gonna assume limited) theatrical release, because other than a notation telling me it was in theaters at some point, I can’t actually find all that much info on it. Which doesn’t really surprise me, since the movie isn’t all that impressive.



I gotta admit though, until around the half-way mark, the film actually had me in its corner. The filming location? Glorious. The movie was actually shot in Fairbanks, Alaska, so it contains some very nice scenic shots of the woods, and the frozen lake, and the remote cabin. So the movie looks exceptionally good and is really highlighting the feeling of isolation to build up the tension and impending dread. And of course it just looks really pretty.





And believe it or not, I can’t even complain about the acting, which is usually the #1 cause of my facial tics when I’m watching films like this. But here, no acting-related tics. Between James Remar, Sherilyn Fenn, Ray Wise, Q’orianka Kilcher and Graham Greene, the movie has a shockingly good cast. Even amongst the side characters, there isn’t a slacker among them. Everyone does a good job. Even better? Other than the couple of characters you’re naturally not supposed to like, all the character archetypes are all rather likable. So other than the evil scientist and the pretentious, racist photographer, there are actually likable people in this movie. Hurray! I love it when I don’t have to despise 90% of the cast.





Okay, so you’ve got a nice setting, good actors, some likable characters, and the perfect set-up for a group of (fairly decent) people to be terrorized by a genetically enhanced monster who is going to chow down on their unsuspecting asses. Sounds good! So what’s the problem?

Uh, sadly, the damn monster. Up to the half way point in the film, the movie is doing pretty good, because by this point you’ve only seen glimpses or suggestions of the monster. A noise. A paw. A shaking tree limb. You know, your standard monster movie build-up type stuff. But then they actually show it to you and that’s where the movie hits a snag. Because this thing is supposed to be an enhanced polar bear. We know that. You clearly see the polar bear on some of the movie posters. You even clearly see a polar bear towards the beginning of the movie when it ‘escapes’ and starts roaming around the research facility. The filmmakers superimposed a clip of an honest to god polar bear walking across the hall.


Behold! I do not lie!

But then you actually SEE this creature and it looks nothing like that bear they showed you in the beginning of the film, or in any of the natural history books you may have read. And I guess they sort of hinted that it wouldn’t, because at least one character says “that’s not a bear” at some point before you see it. But again, they’ve already SHOWED YOU a bear, so you’re confused and still thinking “but, it’s a bear”. But it’s not. Because the evil research group was messing with the bear’s DNA or some shit – and this is a spoiler – and they decided to add wolf DNA to the polar bear.


“Are you proud of me, brother?”
“Be strong, Clarence. Be strong for mother.”

Now, WHY they did this, is never explained. Hell, it’s never even hinted at. The movie is book-ended by promo videos from the evil corporation saying how they’re trying to save the environment blah, blah, blah, but the film never goes into detail about how they think combining the DNA of two predators was supposed to accomplish this goal. There’s just a lot of staring at you with fake smiles. So I guess we’re just supposed to assume that they’re crazy, evil scientists or some shiz. Or maybe they just thought it sounded cool and didn’t think things through. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, it was a bad idea. Especially with their clearly crappy security measures.


“We are trustworthy people..hehheh…heh…”

Point is though, we now have a monster with wolf and polar bear DNA. What does that mean?  Sadly, it means that our monster is an ungodly abomination of both. And not in a cool way like those scientist freaks were hoping for. And I hate to sound mean, because I know there were people out there who made this and put a lot of work into it, and I’m grateful that the filmmakers actually spent money on an actual animatronic and didn’t scrimp on questionable CGI like they easily could have. But dear gods, – again, sorry effects team – this thing looks so stupid. It’s like they used the head of a werewolf puppet, attached it to a larger bear body and then bleached its fur. It just looks so bad. All I could think about every time I saw this thing was that it just looked like a very fat werewolf that got into the local grocer’s freezer and ate all the ice cream. Like, rather than the movie giving us the werewolf equivalent of that hunky guy who lived down the street, instead we get the werewolf version of some fat schlub of a guy named Chad who lives in his mom’s basement. I just… I’m sorry, but I hate this derpy looking thing so much. It’s so bad it took me out of the film every time I got a good look at it. And it must have hurt them to look at it too, because they keep trying to hide its stupid, ugly face by keeping it hidden in the dark. And that’s a shame, because I was actually kinda diggin’ the film up to the point it showed up.


Oh, you poor thing! What did they do to you!? *weeps*

Oh, poor Unnatural. You were *this* close to being a decent little monster movie. I mean, you do have your fair share of other problems too. Like how no one in the movie seems to know how to run. Or how incredibly dumb they all get by the end of the movie. Or killing off all the native characters first, and then killing off all of the other likable characters next, thus leaving the assholes for last and forcing us to put up with them longer. That’s not only annoying, but also feels a little racist, me thinks. But the monster… Oh goodness, the monster… That’s what really killed your movie. I’m sure you tried. I mean, you had someone make that abomination and there was an explosion at some point, so I know you at least had a little bit of money to throw at this film. So I like to believe you tried. But clearly you didn’t run the film through any focus groups, because I’m sure if you had, everyone would have told you how ridiculous your main character looked. Or maybe you did and you were too far along by that point to fix it. Because if you had changed that one thing, the movie could have at least ended up in the “decent” category. But you didn’t, so it’s not. Bummer. Whatever your train of thought was though, I think we’ve all learned a very valuable lesson from this film. That lesson being that, no matter the reasoning, Fat Werewolf is never the way to go.

Unless you’re going for some sort of comedy. Then I guess it’d be fine.

Unnatural is available on a variety of streaming services.

Unnatural is also available on DVD.

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