Grabbers

If you haven’t heard of this movie, check it out… various VOD outlets have it right now to watch (shockingly, Netflix doesn’t even have a release date). Trusty old IFC Midnight had it for us tonight, and it’s a fun monster movie. I’ve seen Syfy movies with more gore, but WAIT! Hear us out! Don’t let that deter you. There are several Syfy monster movies with surprisingly nasty moments, but the shitty CGI (especially the CGI blood that is maybe one notch above looking like someone just colored over the print with a red Sharpie in a hurry) ruins the gore 99 times out of 100. No CGI blood in Grabbers – unless it was some effect that was completely impossible to do without CGI, they used prosthetics and composite shots – and nothing looked remotely phony, which is hard to pull off with a relatively small budget and a monster that moves and looks like nothing you’ve seen in a long while. Obviously, a lot more care and craftsmanship was taken with Grabbers. Better acting, better story, better script, characters that you aren’t wishing horrible deaths upon and are actually rooting for …and you can bet your ass it has top-notch special effects. The monsters of the title refreshingly come from outer space (in the vein of say, Slither, or The Blob) rather than a military or government experiment that was botched and covered up. Grabbers has a modest budget, but never looks like it, and the monsters are especially cool; writhing masses of tentacles, with some of the attributes of spiders, squid, and even starfish (when they’re chilling) that look like nothing seen in recent memory. A Fangoria interview with director John Wright said they went out of their way to come up with a unique creature design, and they succeeded with gooey flying colors. If you’re still on the fence, check out this Dread Central review, which we are happy to report this fun flick lives up to. It’s also a great choice for when you need some light horror, such as when, say, you’ve recently watched two New French Extremist horror movies too close together, and realized it was a bad judgement call after it was too late (especially if one of them was Martyrs). For Grabbers, you can break out the popcorn and kick back for a fun time – and it might not hurt to have some recreational booze on hand.