The Friday Night Horror Movie: Grabbers (2012)

Grabbers is a horror comedy about a bunch of squid-like Alien face-huggers that land off the coast of an Irish island. They live off of water and blood but seem to be allergic to alcohol. To survive the townsfolk must stay as drunk as possible as that makes their blood poisonous to the creatures. That’s a great premise. One the film struggles to live up to. It is a throwback to those old 1950s science fiction films like The Blob (1958) or The Giant Claw (1957). It takes its monsters seriously while also winking at the audience.

Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) volunteers her time on the remote island to allow the chief a couple of weeks off. She’s a workaholic and initially takes offense to Garda Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle) who comes to work half-drunk all the time. But mostly she figures it will be a quiet stay and will impress her bosses for working on her vacation time. When some mutilated whale corpses wash up on the shore she gets a little worried, but Dr. Smith (Russell Tovey) a marine ecologist assures her that while unusual such things are not unheard of.

Then the aliens attack.

Well, first the town drunk, Paddy (Lalor Roddy) captures a small “grabber” and our heroes all have a good look at it. When it lays some eggs they realize it is a female and figure there must be a male version somewhere on the island. He’s the big one and soon enough he’s attacking everybody.

Eventually, they realize the whole blood alcohol thing and then they hustle the town into the local pub and have a big drunken party to keep everyone safe.

The film reminded me quite a bit of Tremors (1990), a movie I loved as a kid. It has those same comic horror sensibilities. But Tremors had Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Michael Gross, and Reba freaking McEntire. While the cast of Grabbers holds its own, they don’t have the same charm, nor comic timing. None of the jokes are as good either. I was mostly mildly amused throughout, but rarely did I really laugh. Made in 1990 Tremors used all practical effects too, while Grabbers uses the same CGI sludge we see in everything now. The Graboids in Tremors might not look as “real” as the Grabers but they sure do look cooler.

There’s quite a bit of Slither (2006) DNA here as well, and one scene is quite reminiscent of Gremlins (1984). All of those are better films than Grabbers. But the thing is, Grabbers isn’t a bad time at the movies. It is an entertaining hour and a half. It just could have been so much better.