Grabbers

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For yours truly, there really is something about the horror comedy that comes from the British commonwealth. A lot of it has to do with the fact that they always seem to have such fun with things, and you know that with these you're almost always in for a really solid B movie. Here we have an Irish creature feature that's no exception, and I honestly just want to see more horror comedy from Ireland now.

We are introduced to Garda Ciarán O'Shea (Richard Coyle), and Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley). "Garda", for anyone unfamiliar can roughly be translated to "Officer". O'Shea is a resentful alcoholic lazybones who somewhat resents Nolan, his new workaholic partner who takes a job on a remote Irish island where the townsfolk have discovered mutilated whale corpses along the beach. Soon enough, it is revealed that a group of tentacled aliens, varying in size, are the source of the attack.

Where things get really fun here are when the town lush, Paddy (Lalor Roddy) remarkably survives an attack, and it's soon theorized by local marine ecologist, Dr. Smith (Russell Tovey) that alcohol is their best defense. While these creatures thrive on water and blood, alcohol seems to provide a sort of poison to them. So, indeed, a lot of the humour to this movie does come from drunken Irish dialogue. But seeing as this is from the Irish, it makes me think a lot aboot us here in Canada embracing our stereotypes so well, eh?

I don't think there's a whole lot else left to say about it, so here we have a pretty short review. I think if I were to compare it to anything as far as "mood" goes with American films, it's a lot like 'Eight-Legged Freaks' in that it's a B movie that recognizes itself as a B movie, and it's one of the finer examples of, once again, a nation embracing its stereotypes and just having a good time with things. I thought this was actually a lot of fun, and I do tend to have a sort of bias towards modern B movies like this.

Unfortunately, however, this one is pretty damn hard to find, so one will certainly have to do some digging in order to find and enjoy it. But if you can find it (currently rentable from Apple TV), and you enjoy these kinds of movies as much as I do, AND can get past some of the language, I recommend grabbing some salty snacks, plenty of beer, and enjoying the silly sci-fi fun that is 'Grabbers'.

4/5

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