This is a severely misleading film. Deceived by the weird -- mind you, very entertaining -- sounding plot synopsis and low-budget-looking poster, we thought Grabbers would be a logical choice for this week’s review. How pleasantly surprised we were. This film isn’t terrible in any sense of the word! Dare we say it was actually a good film.
Shot in beautiful Belfast, Northern Ireland -- the same location where Game of Thrones was filmed -- the film is about a Garda (an Irish police officer) who arrives in a quaint, seaside town to fill in for a colleague on holiday. Queue the arrival of nasty-looking, tentacled aliens with a thirst for human blood, and things start getting real. The only thing stopping these aliens? Belligerent drunkenness. The townsfolk must fight the beasts while simultaneously fighting to stay upright.
As we said before, outside of the poster and plot synopsis, this film doesn’t really exhibit any characteristics of a bad movie. The acting isn’t cringe-worthy, but pleasing to watch. Director Jon Wright actually took the two lead actors out drinking and filmed them plastered, to help their performances. And it shows! The rest of the cast is entertaining to watch as well. It’s also hard not to love an Irish accent.
With a film like this, it would be easy to overuse CGI -- as most bad films do -- but this film rarely shows the aliens, waiting till the halfway mark to really show anything, a technique which effectively build suspense. It was also nice to see some quality CGI for the times they did show the monsters.
The Bottom Line: With satisfying effects, acting and story, this film should be closer to the top of your Netflix queue, rather than the bottom.